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Some kind of outreach programmes are needed to educate people on this disease. To inform all and sundry that treatment is available, for treatment does not begin at a treatment center.

Treatment begins when there is correct, accurate information about the disease available to Kenyans who are ignorant or unaware of the facts. Just going up to someone and saying "did you know..." is doing your part. I was told. I am telling you - now you go and tell someone else. Today!

Information about alcohol and alcoholism is invaluable whether you live with an alcoholic or not. Whether you are related to, or know one or not for it helps you not to take things for granted. It helps you avoid many tricky situations where someone else's use of alcohol might put you at risk. Suddenly riding with a drunk driver from a bash as he weaves slightly from side to side on the road all the while laughing as he calls "iishhh okay, professional driver in control" is no longer funny.

Suddenly you realise that having a drink every day after work is a habit you fell into and need to fall out of. That forcing cheap liquor down your throat until it brings tears to your eyes just to fit in with your peers does not make you cool but instead a fool. But most of all it makes you wake up the fact that you are the one suffering while your loved one is having a never ending party. They drink — you suffer. Needlessly!

But most importantly, it makes you understand that you and your whole family are also not only as powerless as the alcoholic over alcohol, but that your lives too have become equally unmanageable. Constant let downs, unfulfilled and broken promises, shattered dreams all serve to smother the people close to the alcoholic with shame. They begin to see themselves in the same light as alcoholic's view themselves — weak, dependent, having something wrong with them, an overwhelming feeling of being useless

Though you do not know it you are a codependent, carrying as horrendous a load of shame as the alcoholic for your seeming inability to stop the constant shouting and arguments, your apparent weakness and inability to control the mad drinking and behaviour of your loved ones.

This shame and resulting denial result in greater tragedy, hurt and suffering as instead of seeking treatment, families' doggedly brace themselves to weather the constant storms.

All family members, from spouse to the children, take on all kinds of new roles which mean organising living around the alcoholics drinking. They do this all the while assuming they are total failures as they have not successfully 'sorted out' the drinking problem in the home.

For alcoholism is a 'whole family' disease. The afflicted person is sick and infects all those who are in constant close contact with them. However now is the time to stop suffering. First off you have to start start healing yourself the easiest way — learn about the disease. Read. Talk to recovering alcoholics. Heal.

While we wait for the Church to pull up its socks, what is to be done for those who are suffering now? Those who have been suffering for years? Firstly you have to accept that there is nothing to be ashamed about. Your loved one has a chronic disease. Pure and simple. Secondly it is not caused by you and so too no need for one to feel guilty.

Alcoholism is caused by the affected persons bodily makeup and its' subsequent reaction to alcohol ingestion. Alcohol does not cause alcoholism.

Alcoholism does not come in bottles. It comes in people. There is also no way of telling if one is alcoholic or otherwise until one starts drinking so the best protection against the disease ultimately is abstinence.

So too for the alcoholic. The only way for them to manage the disease is total abstinence from alcohol consumption. But how do you get someone to stop when they do not recognise alcohol as the cause of their problems in the first place?

For no alcoholic ever willingly agrees that alcohol is the root cause of their problems. Rather they always have on hand a long list of reasons as to why they drink and not for them your run-of-the-mill mundane every-day reasons. Never. The alcoholic is always equipped with extremely convincing reasons. What then do you do in this classic Catch 22 situation?

Well, you let them drink. That's right. Just let them drink. For we never allow them to drink freely. We nag and worry about them. We play the futile game of 'what if?' every time they are out drinking. "What if he gets hurt? What if she has been in an accident?

What if I am comfortably asleep here and they are lying hurt somewhere in a ditch bleeding to death?"

Soon it is morning and with bleary eyes you head off to the office having memorised every inch of the ceiling as you stared at it the whole night, starting every time you thought you heard a knock at the fron door.

Ultimately you stagger with a pounding head into the office as everyone tells you how awful you look imploring you to see a doctor. Too tired and worried to protest you instead mutter some unintelligible reply. 20 minutes later, informed you have a visitor and wondering who it could be you call out for them to enter.

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.

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