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Story and Pix By David Ogot snr. © 2003

Published in the first issue of the monthly 'MONEY' magazine, August 2003

I started smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol in form one in Lenana High School in 1974 to show I was a tough guy and thus impress girls. This was the impression many of us had from all the movie heroes, ranging from the late John Wayne to Clint Eastwood. Tough talking, hard drinking macho types who always got the bad guy, then the girl before riding or driving off into the sunset.

From that first puff and sip began a harrowing 27-year journey of horror, despair, confusion and anger. 27 years of lost opportunities and missed chances. It led me initially to stealing from my parents to buy alcohol and later to stealing things from my house to sell for peanuts to maintain my drinking.

Constant nights in police cells for various reasons ranging from drinking at hotels with no money to pay the bills, to be found walking all over town at odd hours without identification papers to being caught up in swoops of night clubs or chang’aa dens.

Finally on October 1 2000, I landed at Asumbi Treatment Center, in Homa Bay and there for the first time I learned what it meant to be alcoholic. It was here that I decided to fight the stigma and shame attached to alcoholism and which prevents alcoholics and their families from seeking treatment. It was during my stay here that I made up my mind to make Kenyans aware of the fact that alcoholism was a disease and not a sign of moral depravity, sin or simply people who had no will power.

For it is only by educating all Kenyans constantly right from primary school on what the drug alcohol is and what it’s effects are that we shall accomplish demand reduction when Kenyans finally begin making an informed choice on whether to drink alcoholic beverages or not. But most of all it is only by telling our stories that we will overcome the stigma which is currently killing alcoholics.

Together with my wife Eileen, we started a non-profit organisation ‘goinghomedotcom’ to assist families of those living with an alcoholic as well as the alcoholics themselves, by talking to them and getting their loved ones into treatment. The organization would also create awareness on the disease and the drug that causes it, especially through the media, as I am a trained journalist and producer. From this, last year we produced a forty-minute documentary on alcoholism entitled ‘Nobody Kicks A Dead Dog’

This video was launched at the French Cultural and Cooperation Center on the 21st. of August by Assistant Minister of Health Abdi Kochalle, who ably stood in for the then Minister of Health, Prof. Sam Ongeri. Also present were the then P.S. Health Dr. Julius Meme and National Coordinator, National Agency for the campaign Against Drug Abuse (NACADA) with the press amply represented including the Secretary General Kenya Union of Journalists, Ezekiel Mutua at the function that was organised as a mini-workshop by goinghomedotcom. The video has done very well having been aired on Citizen TV in December 2002 and then due to public request again in January this year. Tens of schools and education institutions have bought the video for their awareness education, as well as many doctors, with bulk orders coming from the Department of Social Services and National Museums of Kenya as well as several rehabilitation centers.

It is also to this end, that we have put up a website, the first of its kind in the region where one can find several articles of interest to those who would seek to learn more about this disease, those who are already caught up in it and those living with them. The site www.goinghomedotcom.org also has a permanent listing of various places one can go to get help or advice. This was to fulfil a vow I made to myself after I left ‘rehab’ that no Kenyan would have to be thrown about to quacks or suffer because as happened to me even when I realised I needed help, there was no one to tell me where to go.

Right now I continue to create awareness by not only giving talks at schools, workshops, and seminars all over the country but also through articles in the press and talks on radio and T.V. The second documentary in the series will also be out shortly. For it is only through our stories that the stigma will finally be overcome, for that is in line with goinghomedotcom’s slogan ‘touching lives through inspiration.’

David Ogot is a freelance journalist/producer who has personal experience with alcoholism. He can be reached at goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com