Almost every family has a black sheep, that one person who drinks too much and causes chaos, the one who cannot keep a job, or a wife, the one who is always borrowing to take care of never-ending emergencies,
Hands up if you’ve never attended a crisis meeting made up of relatives to discuss how to help a wayward relative hell-bent on destroying their life, and in the process making a misery out of everyone else’s lives.
Almost every family has a black sheep, that one person who drinks too much and causes chaos, the one who cannot keep a job, or a wife, the one who is always borrowing to take care of never-ending emergencies, the one who never left home and is always pilfering your mother’s things to fund their addiction. This list could go on and on, and in most cases, alcohol abuse is to blame. Since you cannot divorce a relative like you would a spouse and start life afresh, you keep having these intervention meetings in the hope that this relative will one day listen to the voice of reason and change his wayward ways. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
A while back, a friend recounted an incident with an older brother that gets her doubling up with laugher whenever she recalls it, though at the time, it was a cause of distress. Her brother had a habit of drinking a little bit too much and when that happened, he tended to start fights and would get thrown out of the pubs he was drinking at, turning up at the home he shared with his wife and child dishevelled, dirty and bruised.
One day, this friend got a phone call early in the morning. It was her brother. He had been arrested the previous night after failing to pay for drinks he had taken at a certain night club. If he didn’t pay the bill in the next hour, he told her, he would be charged in court the following day. Alarmed, this friend rushed to the said police station to get her brother out. She was informed that the bill was Sh5, 600, which she settled.
When her brother emerged from the cell and saw her, it dawned on him that he was a free man, and to my friend’s dismay, he began to taunt the police officers manning the front desk. Obviously, the alcohol he had taken the night before was yet to wear off.
At that point, my friend was experiencing runaway panic and anxiety, sure that he would be hauled back to the cell. But the police just looked at him in irritation and roughly pushed him out. This friend would conclude that they were used to such behaviour from the drunks they arrested every day and were glad to be rid of him.
Thoroughly put off by her brother’s remorseless attitude, she decided that she had done her good deed of the day and handed him a Sh100 note and told him to find his way home. There was no way she was travelling with him in the same vehicle, besides, he stank to high heaven.
This story is one of the few that have a happy ending where alcoholism is concerned because a few years later, this friend’s brother managed to kick his addiction and has been sober for years. Financially, he is not doing as well as his siblings, but is able to provide for his family with some help once in a while. I would call this a success story.
From what I have seen around me and from the stories and studies and research finds we publish every day, alcoholism is a worrying disease in this country, a cancer that is gradually destroying families, yet no one seems to know what to do about it.
The writer is editor, Society & Magazines, Daily Nation. Email: cnjunge@ ke.nationmedia.com
