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All of us use various defenses from time to time to prevent our inner selves from being hurt and as a way of helping us cope. Alcoholics, because of their drinking habits are more susceptible to constant assault and berating by society and they therefore resort to using these defense mechanisms with increasing frequency. Finally they literally become a part of their daily pattern of coping, and protecting themselves by shutting out the guilt they would otherwise feel.

However of special note here is denial. Any time I was approached on the subject of denial over my alcohol abuse, I became defensive. This is because I mistakenly associated the word denial, with the word lying.

But denial is a subconscious process, which the individual uses to block out the reality of something that feels threatening. A person honestly will not know when they are in denial and will not be able to see it at all. It is easy to see denial in others though - just difficult to see it in ourselves.

Denial is so entrenched in those suffering from alcoholism that it is often referred to as the 'disease of denial'. This is the fatal facet of addiction as it leaves the alcoholic vulnerable to injury or death. It allows the alcoholic to continue drinking trapped in a self-deluding bubble of ‘all is well’ with sometimes tragic consequences.

I rode a motorcycle for years while drinking alcohol heavily and only suffered one near fatal accident (though I suffered many minor ones). I always bragged I rode better after several hours drinking. This was in spite of all documented evidence to the contrary there is showing how one becomes impaired after only a few drinks. I constantly thank God that I never killed the countless people I carried including my girlfriend (now my wife) or even myself.

Then the constant anxiety attacks, as I was about to go and have a drink. Would it end in chaos again? Would I end up hurting my wife and kids again? I would try to assuage these fears with clenched-teeth determined statements like, 'I would have four beers maximum - well maybe five...maximum six! Or maybe I should not drink today? But no. It would be okay. This time I would not go beyond my limit. This time I would only have those drinks I had decided on. Six maximum. No more. And I could do it. In fact this time I would do it for the sake of my family. No more than six!'

All the while these thoughts were swirling around in my skull, anxiety rose and crashed in stormy waves churning my insides and emotions until I was almost hyperventilating. But at no time during this agonising turmoil did I consider 'not drinking' as an option.

Ultimately I succeeded in relieving not only my immediate anxiety, but also in blocking out my ability to see and experience reality. I would convince myself that this time around it would be different from all the other times. This then is the final insanity in alcoholism. Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

This misty myopic view of life caused by the over dependence on defense mechanisms explains the difference in the way an alcoholic sees events as compared with the reality everybody else around them is actually observing. It allowed me like any other alcoholic to only see the positive side of alcohol use. Unfortunately these defense mechanisms, of which every human being has several of (e.g. regression, rationalization, selective and euphoric recall and minimising) - are the very ones which work to keep denial alive and kicking.

The result would sometimes border on the tragi-comical. Imagine for a moment, an alcoholic wending his way merrily home after a bout of heavy drinking. Somewhere along the line he collapses in a stupor by the roadside and comfortably falls asleep. When he finally wakes to cautious prodding by curious wanaanchi on their way to work, he marvels at how strong the drink must have been to 'interrupt his journey home.' Must have been excellent stuff. Very strong, might as well go back for more. He does not see the ignominy of sleeping in a ditch, or the laughter of those citizens who poked him awake and are now relieved that he is not dead. No. All he can think of is getting back to where they sold him that ‘good, strong drink’ before it finishes.

Regression which is one of the several coping methods used by alcoholics when under stress, they may resort to immature patterns of behavior in order to avoid assuming adult responsibilities. I remember times when I would disregard the consequences of my actions while seeking immediate gratification. An incident, which springs readily to mind to illustrate this was the time my wife, sent me to pay the electric bill. I recall standing impatiently in the queue for about half an hour all the while feeling that a "cold beer would be a very good thing" at that point in time. After all I reasoned, by the time I came back, the queue would obviously be much shorter or even non-existent.

Thus convinced I jauntily gave up my place in the line and popped into one of the nearby joints. Suffice to say, I got home four days later, and of course with no money. My drinking both facilitated even as it excused this behavior. Of course all those around me from friends to family, were also in denial and made all manner of excuses for me. 'He was misled by his friends in the bar.' Or 'he wouldn’t have done that if he was sober, but he had one too many!' But none of them asked the crucial question - what was he doing in the bar in the first place?

But I also used regressive acting out behavior such as temper tantrums, screaming, crying, sulking and so on, even when I was not drinking for this served a major purpose. It kept the attention of my wife, friends and other family members attention focussed on this childish behavior and thus away from my drinking.

Yet as if all these were not enough, the alcoholic can always resort to selective recall in which they create a situation where they choose what to remember. From an event or an occurrence, they will only select facts that support their viewpoint and thus justify their behavior. Selective recall concentrates on the need to place behavior and feelings within acceptable norms. E.g., I often used certain excuses to justify extending my stay in a bar even though we had just passed through for 'one for the road'. Hence I would reason, "instead of going to sit in a stuffy matatu (Kenyan mini-bus taxi) stuck in traffic, therefore not getting home faster than we would if we left the bar, it made more sense to stay and have another "two or three" until the traffic thinned out. Nobody later ever seemed to remember to remind me that there were no traffic jams at 3.00 am in the morning when I was still busy ordering more beer. Had they done so however, I would have blithely reminded them there were no buses or 'matatus' either so instead of wasting a huge amount of money on a taxi, it made more sense to drink until morning and then take the bus for only a few shillings. Why should I make the taxi-man rich? After all "he wasn't even my relative!"

But there were still more mechanisms up my alcoholic sleeve including euphoric recall. This occurred whenever I was intoxicated and became incapable of remembering accurately what I had said or done. The chemical alcohol on my brain relaxed my inhibitions and made me feel good. As a result what I often remembered was "I was terrific at the party" rather than how I kept hassling the host for more drinks, all the while as I sang loudly and tried to dominate all the conversation. This perception and memory distortion contributed powerfully to my inability to see and appreciate reality and my failure to recognise and accept the fact that I was actually on a downward spiral.

Then I could always repress from my conscious mind behavior that was too painful or shameful to remember. The weirder - the more I needed to suppress it. Repression prevents the alcoholic from recognizing the reality of his behavior e.g. I would wake up in the morning and completely smother the disastrous events of the previous night because they were too uncomfortable to think about. At the same time as a consequence of last night I could not stay in the house as I did not even have money for a loaf of bread let alone all the other necessities that were needed and my wife and kids would expect me to produce. Instead I tended to focus my thoughts on the demands of the day that lay ahead. Where to get money to drink, where to go and drink and who, if all else failed, did I buy drinks yesterday who I could palm a couple of drinks off today to get me started?

"My wife is such a nag always whining, complaining and moody. Not even a saint could put up with her. In fact that is why I drink!" Substitute 'wife' with 'mother-in-law,' 'boss', 'husband' etc. and you come up with another defense mechanism used by alcoholics known as projection. With this scenario, things that we do not like about ourselves and cannot accept are unloaded onto other people who we then dislike for this trait that we see in them. We then lay the blame for our drinking flat on their doorstep.

Nothing more could be up my alcoholic sleeve you would think? Wrong! There is rationalization which is commonly used by all of us, alcoholics and non-alcoholics alike which we apply when we do not measure up to our expectations. The alcoholic uses it to make his drinking seem right. It provides reasons for his drinking, for how much he drinks, for what happened when he was drunk. Any excuse or reason is made to sound plausible and explain away his role in the drinking episode. That is why he will calmly explain with a 'butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth' expression on his face that it was not his fault that John opened another bottle of whisky when "we were about to leave. Anyway everyone was high and to top it all, John is our friend. You didn’t really want us to hurt his feelings did you?"

After rolling his car but miraculously walking away without a scratch or injuring any passerby, Peters' only comments were that "anyway I had only a few drinks and it wasn’t such a big accident. After all nobody was even hurt." Yet his vehicle has been towed to the police pound a total write-off with people who saw it disbelieving that anybody had been pried out of it alive. This is referred to as minimising where the alcoholic gives the impression both to himself and others that his drinking is actually less than it is.

Usually alcoholism develops gradually and subtly over a long period of time but without the drinkers' knowledge. Therefore by the time its' presence is being felt it is already well established and the person has entered the realm of illusion which in turn generates DENIAL.

This is the most commonly used unconscious defense. Here the need to protect the psychological pain is so strong that even a daily activity - like drinking - is denied. It must be remembered that denial originates from the sub-conscious mind, and is a total blanket like defense, which covers everything in a massive effort to protect the inner self from pain.

At this point the alcoholic is probably still what is called a 'coping' alcoholic who most of the time acts normally. I was not beating my wife, hardly had temper tantrums and for the most part attended work. That is how the denial worked because I saw myself as coping or functioning. So I could not believe I had a problem. Drinking was just part of life and a way of socialising. But this is what the outsiders would see. But what my wife, children and others close to me could see was entirely different. They were the ones who bore the brunt of the broken promises, mood swings, falling alseep in front of the TV when I was home, long silences, missing money or money whose use I refused to account for, irrational criticism and occasional night-outs.

This sets the stage for another powerful emotion, shame, to join the cast. Coupled with ignorance over the difference between drunkenness, which is willful and alcoholism a disease, this cloak of shame completely envelops those living with the alcoholic.

The complicated, convoluted ways of alcoholism paralysed me the alcoholic and those who were living close to me. Somehow, though we were all locked in this bizarre dance, we refused to admit and accept the reality of what was happening right in front of our eyes.

One of the reasons for this I have since found out in my recovery process, is that alcoholic behavior is not constant. I would have long periods of sobriety. Times when I felt for whatever reason that I should stay off the booze for a while. Maybe I was working on a project, or to prove to myself that I could or maybe just a challenge from my friends that I could not stay without a drop for say, three weeks. But whatever the reason after abstaining for the set period without touching a drop, all I achieved was to end up reinforcing mine and my loved ones and friends belief that alcohol was not my problem.

If anything it merely emphasized what I had all along asserted - that I drank because of other problems. Otherwise any ‘fool’ knew that an alcoholic was someone who would not last even a single day without drinking yet here I was going even weeks at a go, 'bone dry.' No! Alcohol could not be my problem.

During those periods of 'calm' everyone close to me were always quick to convince all and sundry who would listen (even those who were tired of listening) that "he was just going through a bad patch," or "he was recently bereaved," or "the problem at the office has been resolved" and so on. In fact they would just as soon have put the whole issue behind them satisfied that it had 'gone away.' Unfortunately alcoholism and its attendant problems if not managed is like pregnancy - does not go away, but only gets bigger.

With every apparently unexplainable new bout of resumed drinking, all the damaging emotions they had smothered like anger and rage all resurfaced with a vengeance. I had been all right, and now for no apparent reason here I was off again. Obviously the only logical explanation was I was doing this intentionally to 'hurt' and 'spite' them. At this point the family is in serious trouble.

Of all the defenses used by an alcoholic denial is the biggest obstacle to recovery as it affects not only the person drinking but also his family and thus by extension society at large. This point I cannot stress enough.

Denial is the all-stops-pulled effort by the alcoholic to avoid his pain or problem. Though it may look like lying it is actually more machiavellian and devious, being a system of self defense to deal with the loss of self-esteem, pain, guilt loneliness and helplessness which hound him constantly as a result of his drinking.

Thus denial has many facets and purposes. It buys time for the alcoholic, keeps the accusers at bay and paramount it allows the alcoholic to continue drinking and thence to numb their pain. Therefore denial can be seen as the most significant symptom of the alcoholics symptoms.

How to handle denial is then a very tricky business. But the main thing I found out is that one has to have humility. I had to be able to not only see, but accept the truth about myself. Never easy.

A trick that made it easier to tackle my denial, was realising that we all have it. I will also never be completely free of denial, as it is a major part of a human beings defense system. So I move through it bit by bit openly and honestly looking at the reasons behind my defensiveness.

Questions like "why am I being so defensive when so and so talks about alcohol?" Or "what is it that they see about me that possibly I cannot see?" Therefore to me the most important aspects required to tackle denial are honesty and humility. Yes! That simple. But maybe not that simple. Nobody but nobody likes their faults being pointed out to them. The so called 'naked' truth is always very cold. But shiver and freeze we must even as we accept these truths as they are pointed out.

Kenyans too are therefore required to be honest with themselves to overcome their own denial if they are to help their alcoholic loved ones. For an alcoholic is not someone to be ashamed of and hidden away but someone who is ill and needs treatment like any other sick person. Once an alcoholic (and those close to them) come out of denial and accept that he/she has a problem, half the battle is won.

My acceptance of my problem started me on my road to recovery. Once I threw away my warm comforting blanket of denial and accepted that I had a drinking problem, the rest has followed. My life has been literally handed back to me. How many times does God give you the chance to start again, wipe the slate clean and do it all over again? Very few human beings get that chance - every alcoholic who comes out of denial does. The alternative is for an alcoholic as always JAIL, MENTAL INSTITUTION or DEATH!

David Ogot snr
12th. November 2002

A condensed version of this story appeared in Biosafety News No. 37 newspaper of December 2002/January 2003

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