The scourge of Alcohol! The answer is to Educate from Montessori!

Firstly, I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite. I enjoy my occasional tipple, and in my interpretation, occasional is about once a month, and in December about 5 times that!!!

Sri Lanka, I believe is up there on the world list of alcohol intake per capita, and when one generally takes female drinkers as restricted to some of the numerically insignificant wealthy, and estate labor, the male intake is actually world beating.

I was seated at my desk on Poya Day, reading the various newspaper cuttings I set aside to read and assimilate, and despite the wet weather, there were these yobs from the adjoining village coming through my property to sit by the side of the tank and play the music on their three wheeler and drink themselves silly.

I was not ready for a fight, so I had to suffer in silence. However the cheek of them coming to my backyard to drink, without doing it in their own backyards, is just bad manners! Who cares about manners when you come to the perfect spot for a booze up?

Poya fell on a Wednesday, and being a holiday, they can’t find ANYTHING BETTER TO DO, than arrange to get sloshed, at my place, disturbing the peace at HOME!!! Would I go to their back yard to get drunk and be merry!

There are many occasions, where even my friends have asked me to arrange for the alcoholic craving that seems to overcome people when they come here. I have acceded, though not too willingly, as I come here for the peace and quiet more than the noise, and can live instead with the sounds of the forest, and the birds and frogs, who inhabit this area in numbers.

Closing all Alcoholic sales on Poya just seems to encourage the abuse even more! Begging the question if we must keep all bars open on Poya. I don’t have an answer there.

My firm belief is that as part of the complete overhaul of the mind of a person, it can only be done at the pre- school or Montessori stage, where education by highly qualified teachers will impress on these impressionable children the disastrous consequences of alcohol abuse, and as many of their fathers are addicts they must be encouraged to forsake it, rather than believe it is a natural part of a father to come home drunk and abuse mother! Only time will tell, if we seriously have the heart to change our attitudes for the sake of the Country!

Ultimately a clear and satisfied mental state will only forsake the need for IT.