The image of Australia purveyed overseas is of a sun-drenched land of opportunity. However this paper will consider the darker side of this free enterprise society & , in particular, those who for reason of social failure or despair are driven to take their own lives. Public concern in Australia, as elsewhere in the Western world, has been increasingly focused upon the toll of unnecessary death which seems to accompany the stresses of a “modern” way of life: alcohol-related mortality & suicide.