Alcoholic Content: NA

Caught a story on the news that some organisation has calculated the average Australian spends approximately $80/week on alcohol, and are issuing us a challenge to dry out and send the money not spent on alcohol to the likes of Odyssey House. They have one of those punningly awful slogans: Have you got the spirit to give up vodka for a week?

Only a week? Hell, I'll give up vodka forthe rest of the year. I'd rather drink vinegar (and yes, I have). Do I hear sponsors calling?

In the spirit of the challenge, however, skribe and I tried to work out our annual alcohol consumption, and consequently the vast amounts of cash we've unknowingly thrown away on drink. Let's see. He might get through a half-carton of beer in the same time it takes me to finish off one stubby: about a year. We go through maybe a bottle of wine every couple of months, mostly in cooking, and we can't even claim to spend much on that since it mostly gets given to us by the mad Hungarian (who, incidentally, has rather fine taste in wines). We have a bottle of brandy that's been around years, and some rice wine and sherry in the pantry, and that's it.

Figuring that in terms of money spent per week on alcohol is giving me negative figures.

$80 a week on alcohol? Either someone has really skewed those figures, or we're talking about some serious drinking at the far end of the demographics. Admittedly, skribe and I have never been much good at being average, which is why we tend to ignore findings like this, although it's always fun to play at being just like normal people.