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continued from last week 'Healing the wonds of alcoholism'

In comes your slightly disheveled wife/husband/son/
daughter/father/
mother... apologising why they hadn't been home last night (or last two or three or ten nights) and launching into a fantastic story why finishing with "...and that's why I need a thousand bob just to go and sort out this problem. Then I will head straight home." No real remorse. Just a rueful grin and loads of charm

So much charm coupled with relief that they are alive and apparently no worse for wear leads you to part with the thousand bob plus another five hundred for any 'emergency'.

Faster than a bat out of hell, they are out the door heading straight for the nearest bar. That night as you lie awake tossing bleary eyed from lack of sleep but kept awake by that gnawing worry-knot in the pit of your stomach wondering what has happened this time, it never occurs to you that they were lying.

What you have to do now is to close your eyes and go to sleep. Believe and admit that you too are powerless over alcohol. What if they are arrested — tough luck. Let them sort it out. Let them start handling the consequences of their drinking. If they come home act as if everything were normal. Do not ask where they were. If they start selling things, let them pack and go. Do not play 'what if' it does not work. Let them drink and let them suffer the consequences of that drinking. Do not pick up after them, for it is this very mopping up the consequences of an alcoholic's drinking after them, that enables them to keep drinking. Note that as long as you keep enabling an alcoholic, he/she will not stop drinking until the body or mind packs up or they die. This like their being alcoholic is writ in stone.

By thus detaching ourselves from our alcoholic's problems and instead focussing on restoring ourselves to some sense of equilibrium, we actually help encourage the alcoholic not only to seek but to keep sobriety.

By this carthitic act of accepting that we too are powerless over alcohol a great load is lifted off our shoulders allowing us to straighten up from the disabling stoop and look with confidence into the distance wherein lies the long, but richly rewarding recovery road to be traveled. For never has an alcoholic been helped by nagging, threatening, preaching or violent scenes. In fact anger and humiliation will only increase the alcoholic's guilt and hence his drinking.

In the process they will suffer, you will suffer, the children will suffer - immensely. Stop enabling and the consequences pile up with unbelievable speed forcing the alcoholic to begin looking closely at themselves probably for the first time and hence probably more agreeable to listen to the truth about their condition say during an intervention.

What are the alternatives? Nothing. You just continue suffering and wait for your loved one to die and they will die. For for an alcoholic to continue drinking only three possible outcomes exist; institutionalized due to insanity, jail or death. This has been proved millions of tragic times over by alcoholics all around the world.

You have the power to make a move. A move that might save your loved ones and maybe even your own life. When I remember that you do not have to wait for the Church or the Government or the Media to make this radical move I am no longer disheartened. Clouds of despair and gloom which have been hanging stagnant over me pregnant and malevolent threatening to burst and chill me to the bone with their stinging, freezing drops of surrender disperse. Almost instantly I feel the bright rays of hope flood warm and pleasant over me. Once again I feel Gods presence and love. I feel hope, for myself.

This is the 3rd. and final part of the condensed article 'Psst-did you know?' by David Ogot which has run in 'The People On Sunday's' column 'Alcohol, other drugs and you with David Ogot' for the last three weeks.

David Ogot snr. is a freelance journalist/producer with personal experience with alcoholism. He can be reached at goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com website: www.goinghomekenya.org