After her 21-year-old brother jumped drunk into a river and drowned, the Brisbane writer reflects on a destructive force that Australia isn’t talking about…Elspeth Muir with her brother Alexander, who died at 21 after drinking too much and jumping into the Brisbane river. Muir’s memoir explores her own culpability in excusing the drinking culture that led to Alexander’s death.
 
Elspeth Muir’s brother Alexander jumped into Brisbane river weeks after turning 21. When they pulled his body out of the water three days later, his blood-alcohol content measured almost .25.
“My brother died because he was drunk,” Muir wrote in her memoir Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane, “and because the drink made him stupid”…Since the age of 13, Alexander had been binge drinking – and getting into trouble for it. Muir recalls more than one occasion when she had to evade police questions regarding the whereabouts of her teenage brother.
For  complete article go to… https://www.theguardian.com/books/australia-books-blog/2016/jun/20/alcohol-was-there-always-elspeth-muir-on-her-brothers-death-and-australias-drinking-culture?subid=11911254&CMP=ema_632&utm_source=ADF+Master+List&utm_campaign=296567c5bf-GrogWatch_June_28_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe135ee49e-296567c5bf-297991633