'Alcohol was there, always': Elspeth Muir on her brother's death and Australia's drinking culture

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’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”.

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