"Jane, Jaaaane?" her husbands hoarse but still strong voice buffeting her from the bedroom goads her into frantic action, as trying to quell the wave of anxiety rising like vomit in her gorge she snatches up the telephone receiver and begins angrily stabbing the buttons and so completing the sequence of numbers that connect her to his office.

Soon she is talking to his boss and explaining for the umpteenth time why her husband could not make it to the office. She had become quite adept at making up all kinds of stories and yet Ben her husband did not seem to realise how much time he was losing from work.

She even doubted that he realised how much this drinking was affecting the harmony of the household indeed they seemed to do nothing but fight nowadays that is if they were not making up after the fight and more often than not his idea of making up involved going out for a romantic dinner.

"Just the two of us!" he would insist turning on the charm. "It’s so long since we had any time to ourselves." But that ‘romantic dinner’ would turn out to be a drink first "just to get us in the right mood" which would inevitably end up with some of his ‘buddies’ who seemed to have an uncanny knack for emerging from the woodwork to join them for a ‘quickie’. This always happened no matter where they chose to hide themselves with the inevitable result that they would get home at the wee hours of the morning and more lost time off work or he would crawl off to work cursing the whole world all the while nursing a pounding headache.

But he was always remorseful after these bouts of drinking promising that he had just been under pressure and that it would not happen again. Indeed two or three weeks would go by in which Ben did not touch a drop of alcohol.

Even when they passed a pub on a weekend or went out with a group of friends and there was alcohol around, when pressed he would jokingly say he was taking a break thus desisting not from lack of opportunity.

But suddenly for no apparent reason he would come home on a Saturday morning having spent the whole night out with "friends". This after knowing very well that he money he had spent was to go towards the down payment for the new suite of furniture they were buying. Now she would have to borrow gain from her work-mates or worse still her mother who would first subject her to a long lecture on Ben’s drinking habits. In fact these financial difficulties as a result of his drinking were really beginning to be a nagging and constant problem.

She could still not get over the embarrassment and inconvenience they had gone through after the electricity was disconnected for unpaid bills. When she had confronted Ben, he had looked at her sheepishly; turning on that disarming boyish smile which had first attracted her to him and confessed &quiot;I am so sorry I forgot."

However it was not until she pressed him for the money saying she could go and pay straight away that he blurted out that he had used the money with some of his "buddies" whom he had bumped into after passing for "a quick beer" after work.

Jane felt that when Ben was out drinking with friends he was careless of his family’s welfare and this was even beginning to affect his reputation. One of her close friends had confided in her that she had espied him entering one of the shadier bars in town.

To make matters worse it was around mid-day on a weekday and some of the characters he seemed to be very chummy with "didn’t strike me as being the salt of the earth types" she had concluded. Not being able to see more as the traffic flow had started moving again forcing her to drive on.

Perplexed, Jane was still trying to come up with an unconfrontational way of asking who he had been with and why he was entering a bar when he was meant to be in the office. Why was her husband turning to seemingly lower companions and inferior environments?

But the memory of the explosive outburst the last time she had tried to ask him about his apparently increasing drinking makes her think twice about broaching the subject. In fact even as he had started passing his favorite pub for a drink almost everyday after work what he laughingly called “jam rescue” to let the traffic jams subside she had kept her mouth resolutely shut.

Maybe it was just the stress of work, she thought to herself - a bad patch that they would soon pass through.

Sadly Jane like hundreds of thousands of other Kenyan men and women are living with alcoholic spouses trapped in a viciously spiraling vortex of pain, humiliation, bewilderment and anger and all to often one that ends in death.

For her husband Ben is an alcoholic and his alcoholism is going to progress along a predictable path until ultimately if he does not stop drinking one of three usual outcomes of this progression will catch up with him. Jail, admission to a mental institution or death.

This journey will be characterised by broken promises; time lost from work and eventual loss of work, great financial strain on the whole family, and constant fighting. There will be loss of self esteem all round and most of all a great cloak of shame will snugly wrap itself around the whole family hiding the truth from them as all involved try to put on an appearance that all is well.

At one point the verbal fighting will become physical and Ben will start hitting Jane. But still she will stay; hoping against hope that things will change for the better. They will not and through it all there will be the constant fight to put out the appearance that all is well even when at some point it is apparent to all that something is wrong.

But why does Jane an apparently intelligent and even forceful lady in other spheres seem so helpless and indecisive when it comes to Ben’s drinking? What hold does he have over her that nothing, not logic, not common sense nor the crumbling of her life all around seems able to break?

Simply put, Jane is a sick lady! She has been infected by her husband’s disease. Yes for Ben is sick suffering from a chronic, progressive and ultimately if not managed, fatal disease. This is a disease, which has no cure, but is fully manageable allowing the survivor to lead a normal and fully productive life. Ben is suffering from a disease called alcoholism.

You seem surprised that alcoholism is a disease, but do not beat yourself too much over it. For you are no different from millions of other Kenyans who are not aware of this simple truth and so suffer needlessly day after day.

They talk of curses, and bad blood, sin or simply lack of will power. They talk of drunkenness and depravity and underlying psychological weaknesses or problems. Of inability to cope with life’s problems or poor character or upbringing. In short these suffering Kenyans look every where and at every reason except where the real problem lies - alcoholism.

All are so steeped in denial, which is a major component of the disease that alcoholism has been described as the disease of denial. The alcoholic is sick but does not realise it. He gets frustrated and drinks. When he is happy he drinks, when sad drinks. From these bouts of drinking further problems arise leading to more frustration and - more drink.

At no time however will anyone make any serious attempt to connect the drinking with the deteriorating situation. For the alcoholic is not looking to quit drinking any time soon, but to how he or she can drink like everyone else.

Confused over the messes and scrapes they continue to get in but unable to see the cause of the problem is drinking they go back to drinking vowing ‘this time it will be different’. This then is the insanity of alcoholism as described by those in recovery, where one does the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result each time.

The spouse of an alcoholic too having become a co-alcoholic or co-dependent as they are more commonly known listen to each new promise of change and believe too that this time it will be different.

Other family members as well as friends and even employers too are confused and in denial. So the tragedy continues to play itself out with no apparent end in sight.

Centuries of myth and prejudice are not going to be eradicated overnight nor will the confusion the average Kenyan has be cleared up easily as long as everyone has a different version of what the problem is with as radical and diverse ways of treating or ‘curing’ it.

In ‘Nobody Kicks A Dead Dog’ the landmark video shot in Kenya on alcoholism a spouse of an alcoholic poses "Is it a sickness really? Is it a sickness or is it somebody who just wants to have fun, who wants to shrug responsibility and live a life of their own disregarding everyone else?"

My answer to that and to the suffering families out there like Jane’s is to look at alcoholism like a motor vehicle which suddenly for no apparent reason refuses to start. Two mechanics then happen by and one of them insists the problem is to do with the bodywork, while the other differs leaning towards the electrical system.

Jane leaning towards the bodywork as that means a quick fix lets the more vociferous mechanic start work. Yet even after changing the tires, panel beating and respraying and even changing the upholstery, it still refuses to start. All she has to show for it is a big bill and ever increasing frustration.

In despair she lets the other mechanic try who after cleaning the spark plugs tells her to try and lo and behold the car starts at the first turn of the keys. Solving the problem by looking at it’s true cause not its apparent cause.

With alcoholism too, the way the alcoholic processes alcohol due to differences in his or her body chemistry sets up a craving for more alcohol, which they drink to sate this craving. This sets up yet more want which leads to more drinking an endless cycle.

Others will ask, "why can’t he simply control his drinking like me and every one else?" Well the point is an alcoholic is not like everyone else. The body physiology and brain chemistries react different to alcohol eventually causing some to become addicted to alcohol or alcoholic.M

Once someone has entered the realm of addiction the only way out is abstinence from the drug of choice, in this case alcohol. This is what Jane has to realise so that she can start tackling the alcoholism, not all the myriad other reasons which have nothing to do with the disease. Oh yes and she has to accept that it is a disease. Only then can she too be able to be of any use not only to her spouse but herself.

The author a recovering alcoholic, is the winner of the Kenya Union of Journalists 2003 Drugs Reporter of The Year Award and a freelance journalist/producer.

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