Alcohol serves as a coping mechanism for many

The late, great Maya Angelou once said: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”

This quote relates to our youth of today, deprived for so long of alcohol and the club scene as an escape in a world of so much pressure. This I came to realise with the latest adjusted lockdown level 4 that the country has recently come out of.

As I had stockpiled my liquor ahead of the anticipated lockdown, many believed I had a “dealer” and my alcohol collection was the envy of my peers. At the end of a long, stressful day, the odd drink serves as a coping mechanism for many.

The bird sings because it has a song … the drinker does not drink because they have the buying power, they do so to help relieve the stresses of everyday life.

The women we judge as they dance with bottles of alcohol in their hands are escaping the reality of broken dreams, joblessness and hunger.

The expectation of children whose fathers went to buy formula and never returned home … those children are drinking away the pain of being abandoned.

South Africa ranks sixth in the world in terms of alcohol consumption per capita – and it makes perfect sense.

The abuses of corporate South Africa, if only one is lucky enough to permeate its cast iron walls; the never-ending phone calls from debt collectors because life is largely a revolving credit facility, barely getting through each month with little to no food.

The bottle is often the only means of temporary escape, forgetting and surviving. Now, more than ever, I understand.

When alcohol sales reopened earlier this week, a snaking queue outside a retail outlet was evidence of people who need a coping mechanism that works for them.

Yes, I find it distasteful, but I understand this bird sings because its song is one of hardship, depression, unresolved issues and unfulfilled expectations from families that assume an employee number is the end of poverty.

I understand and I wish a helping hand could be extended to the choir that deserves better.