Rum till I die?

Nov 19, 2008 Editorial

Back at the end of June, the Ministry of Health announced, with some fanfare, the opening of an out-patient “Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre” in the Georgetown Public Hospital compound.
At the time, we noted that the Ministry would have been better advised to include the word “Alcoholism” in the name of the institution, since its announcement made it clear that the treatment of alcoholism was going to be an integral aspect of the Centre’s work.
We feared that even if the Centre advertised its existence, most of its target population – individuals with alcoholism related issues – would remain oblivious to the help available to them. Four months down the line, we are not sure what impact the Centre has made on the treatment of drug addition in general, but on the issue of alcoholism, the theme overall in the country has remained “Rum till I die”.
To begin with, there has been no awareness programme launched to educate the people of “what is alcoholism?” much less the fundamental fact that alcoholism is a disease.
In Guyana, it has long been a right of passage for a boy who desired to be seen as a “man” to not only to begin consuming alcohol, but to show his peers that he could “hold his drinks”.
From the mid-teens, then, drinking became a way of life for young men. In the last decade, this right of passage has evidently spread to include young women.
This development, (or degeneration) is ironic, but maybe it is a case of “if you can’t beat them, then join them”.
The young men, after all, would have continued with their heavy drinking after becoming married; unleashing in the process a whole syndrome of dysfunctionality into their family life.
Since a substantial chunk of the family’s budget went into the “rumshops”, the wives were forced into a hardscrabble existence as they struggled to feed and clothe their children.
And the operative word was “forced”: violence became the norm in such families since the men were frequently out of control because of the heavy alcohol consumption. They had become alcoholics; but those around them kept on excusing them and their behaviour as “the way things were”.
We are saying that the Ministry must launch a countrywide programme to educate our populace about alcoholism in simple terms.
For example, that alcoholism is a disease that includes the following four symptoms: craving – a strong need, or urge, to drink; loss of control – not being able to stop drinking once drinking has begun; physical dependence – withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety after stopping drinking; and tolerance – the need to drink greater amounts of alcohol to get “high”.
The stress has to be on the fact that alcoholism is a disease and like any other disease, it is treatable.
Most Guyanese evaluate alcoholics and alcoholism on moral grounds – the individual is said to be “misbehaving” or “playing bad”. Whether this is true or not, this approach descends invariably solely into moral suasion and ignores the route of utilising the medical and psychological therapeutic treatments that have been proven to have a positive impact in the treatment of alcoholism.
Maybe alcoholism cannot be cured, but it is definitely treatable and the moral suasion could possibly be used to convince the alcoholic to seek treatment. All the approaches to dealing effectively with alcoholism stress the importance of the environment in which the alcoholic – whether recovering, in treatment or recalcitrant – is located.
It is important that alcohol is not freely available or alcoholic friends are not the only social network available.
In Guyana, however, lax licensing procedures have seen rum shops percolate every nook and cranny of the villages and towns. When most of the villages were laid out there were (and are) strict laws that rum shops could only be located on the front street: this has gone by the wayside.
Rum shops are even found cheek and jowl with mandirs, churches and masjids – a presence that expressly contravenes a standing statute on the books.
The Ministry of Health must coordinate its efforts with the Ministry of Housing to recreate a healthy environment that does not almost compel the creation of a nation of alcoholics.

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