Life in Ruins – Blame the Booze!

His legs shivered, his vision blurred, his hands numbed, Rakesh staggered towards the ground that was holding Dussehra festivities. He couldn’t walk straight, it was evident. As his tremulous hands tried touching the fence of the park, he fell down. He could feel a few feet rushing towards him. Immediately, someone lifted him and made him sit. His whole body quivered; he couldn’t think properly, his thoughts intertwined!

He thought, if these people stop surrounding me, I could go and get another peg. But, he knew it wasn’t possible, without escaping from the sight of curious onlookers. He saw a familiar face, that of his wife Swati. She ran towards him and sobbed uncontrollably. He said, “Kya tamasha banake rakha hai?” He held on to the fence and tried his luck again. He was successful; he stood up straight, and tried walking away. However, his knees gave way and he fell again.

As I looked on, his wife wailed. His child looked helplessly at her father staggering, who otherwise was the strongest man for her.  His wife tried holding him, while he just shooed her away. His child called out to him, frightened. But, in his drunken stupor, he couldn’t respond to the love in his daughter’s call.

Picture for representational purpose

What does alcohol do? According to Responsible Party, a European group that raises awareness among students on responsible drinking, alcohol slows down the function of the central nervous system and alters a person's perception, emotion, movement; vision and hearing. Small amounts can make a person feel more relaxed or less anxious. Bigger amounts lead to intoxication by causing greater changes in the brain.

I haven't had any personal or familial experience with alcoholism. Being from a state where alcohol consumption has made us sit up and take notice of the otherwise peaceful Mallus, I have seen and observed how alcohol has destroyed lives. Kerala has the highest per capita liquor consumption in the country with over 8 litres per person a year. About one in 10 men in the state is a heavy alcoholic consumer and this amounts to 5 percent of the state's population addicted to liquor. Statistics carry weight, when we actually see drunken men staggering on the roads of Kerala, or maybe overhear drunken husbands beating up their wives. 

If we focus on India, statistics are equally alarming. According to the the Global Status report on alcohol and health 2014, released by the World Health Organization (WHO), around 30% of the total population of India consumed alcohol in the year 2010. It revealed that over 11% of the population in India indulged in heavy or binge-drinking. The global figure stood at 16%.

Alcohol as such may not be the issue here, as drinking is everyone’s personal choice. But, what makes it a matter of national concern is when lives are lost to alcohol. On the ‘Years of Life Lost’ scale, which is based on alcohol-attributable years of life lost, India has been rated 4 on a scale of 1 to 5. This implies that the alcohol consuming population of our country loses most years of their life because of drinking and its consequences. Liver disease (alcoholic hepatitis, cirrhosis and liver cancer,) heart problems (chronic heart disease, hypertension, heart attack), digestive disorders (pancreatitis or gastritis), neurological disorders (stroke, dementia, memory loss) are some of the ill effects of alcoholism.

Adding to the lives lost, violence has been a major consequence of alcoholism. A study from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville has suggested that men under the influence of alcohol are more likely to perpetrate physical, psychological or sexual aggression against their partners than men under the influence of marijuana. Well, one of the reasons Kerala state government banned alcohol was because of the rising instances of domestic violence against women. Women’s lives have been ruined, and children have grown up in an insecure environment. Families’ finances get perished, and peace gets ravaged. No relevant data can be found on these instances, but lives speak more than numbers.

There have been enough debate on why men succumb to being heavy drinkers (read stress, work pressure), but what it results in is numerous lives being devastated because of one alcoholic person.  Banning alcohol is not the solution. We have enough black markets thriving in our country; getting alcohol won’t be an issue. However, the only solution towards alleviating this evil would be support of family members to help the person quit drinking, government and civil society organisations doing enough to spread awareness (no, just advertisements won’t do).