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This morning, the Kenya National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse is holding an awareness session at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre.

According to an advert in the media, the purpose of the day-long function is to sensitise members of the "families (spouses, children, relatives), employers and employees of persons with alcohol drinking problems."

Of late, there have been reports that President Mwai Kibaki has given up the stuff. Any discussion of one's drinking habits, President or pauper is usually an indication that a rpoblem does indeed, exist.

However, the reason the President has stopped consuming alcohol-if he has-is not the subject of this article. More to the point is the fact that it is being talked about publicly and the opportunity it presents.

Alcoholism is not generally given credence in public as a disease. It suffers the stigma of being a sin and moral depravity. It is frowned upon merely as a habit and one that could be easily broken if only one were not completely lacking in will-power. Alcoholism is confused with drunkenness with its entire concomitant loathing and abhorrence.

Rehabilitation programmes.

Having public figures talk about this disease, openly and truthfully, would quickly have the wonderful and life-saving effect of letting Kenyans view alcoholism as it really is- a disease, and not something to be ashmed of or hidden.

My ardent argument in the past, as now, has been that the President should spearhead this message of hope. In April I went to the extent of writing that the silence at the top was "deafening"

Thus the talk in October about the President quitting the bottle to me came as a great opportunity.

Incidentally, it was also in October that I celebrated three years since I landed at Asumbi Treatment Centre, an alcohol and drug addiction treatment institution

This might merely be a happy coincidence. But in future, October might even be declared an alcohol and alcoholism awareness month with stepped-up educational activities. These could include a "forego a drink" campaign, with Kenyans having designated points where they can deposit money they would ordinarily have drunk to finance rehabilitation programmes.

Yet while we ponder this rosy picture of what could be, we should contemplate what tragic events occurred in October, all alcohol related, that should serve to strengthen our resolve to turn this dream into reality.

• A sevevn-year-old boy died after drinking chang'aa that he and his five-year-old brother found at an illegal still near the river where they were fishing.
• A 51-year-old teacher and a peasant farmer died after drinking chang'aa in Lugari
• Four brothers bludgeoned to death two of their drunken brothers who had tried to beat their parents.
• A mother was jailed for two years for abandoning her five children. The woman had been on the run for several months when she was found in a drinking den.
• In Nyeri, adminstration police officers put two children in custody to act as bait for their father who had escaped after being arrested for possesing illicit brew.
• A 23-year-old forestry offcier drugged a schoolgirl with alcohol before allegedly raping her at her school in Nakuru.

We can no longer ingnore this disater. It is time we made talk about alcohol and alcoholism "fashionable.". This is the only chance to save the lives of countless Kenyans.

This was the case in the United States when in 1978, a former first lady, Betty Ford admitted she had become an alcoholic, barely two years after leaving the White House. She said that her own experiences with shame and misery as a result of her addiction had spurred her to use her prestige to help others.

The Betty Ford Centre opened its doors four years later in 1982. Due to her openess about her alcoholism, she encouraged other women to crawl out of denial. So much so that in 1996, there were more than 450,000 women in the US scattered in various treatment centre. It had become "fashinable" to talk about the disease and with this came the realisation that help was but a phone-call away.

Shrouded in myth and prejudice

However, when the public do not want to be associated with something, they shun, ostracise and stigmatise it. This is also the case with issues they cannot undertsand, where the issues have been shrouded in so much myth and prejudice that it is no lonegr possible to make a level-headed opinion.

But were the same subject to become fashionable, the fickle trend of public opinion is quickly swayed and everybody clamours to advocate for the cause. Suddenly the pungent onion-like layers of myth and misconception are peeled back with the greatest of ease-to reveal a truth which has been there all along.

Alcoholism in Kenya is still surrounded by all sorts of fallacies and outright prejudice which contribute directly to the level of shame felt by its victims as well as their families. Indeed this shame is so great that alcoholism can be called a shame based disease.

(Email: goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com)

Mr. Ogot is a freelance journalist/producer with personal experience of alcoholism.

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