I must have told you about a guy who used to drink on Sundays an entire case of beer sitting at the same place for hours in a sort of small potatoes where he was a respected customer. And if you think he’d be completely stoned, that would be wrong. By the time he goes home late at night after roaming around a few other watering halls he looks fit as fit could be. You came across him when he almost reached his house and talked for some minutes. Of course the climax of the story comes next morning.
“Last night, it was late and we couldn’t talk much.”
“Did you meet last night?” Could there be a better and ‘unexpected’ climax of the previous night’s drinking spree!
Look, saying it over and over again does nothing to make it any easier. But we’re in economically tough times. Almost everybody everywhere else on this planet seems to be in some sort of economic turmoil. That’s what family and friends elsewhere on the globe tell us. “Recession is bearing down on us they tell you whatever that means. So while our troubles aren’t isolated matters when it comes to economic hardships the sad fact is that there seem to be some horribly greedy sections of the society who are making tougher for us. Yes we are in times when greed is widespread as you’ve never seen it before.
But in the midst of all things we ask questions. Why is that people seem to hit the bottle 24/7? How come that even those thought to be moderate earners manage to drink themselves to virtual unconsciousness every other day? Drinking is no more a cheap undertaking. With a single bottle of beer going for forty, fifty birr average and with the soaring price of every day necessities things just don’t add up. For some it seems two plus two is no more four but seven. Is there some Houdini play in all this! You wonder how many families fair when the so-called bread earners are never soaked enough to say, “I’ve had it with alcohol.
Recent statistics about divorces aren’t encouraging. It is almost as many couples are divorced as are married. And we are talking only about official statistics. There certainly are divorces which don’t make it into official statistics and you could imagine the trouble behind all those closed doors.
Recently three guys I know are telling me they are trying their level best to prevent one almost decade old marriage from falling apart. Now the reasons on the surface are that the hubby had in recent times developed the habit of drinking like it was his last drinking day on Planet Earth. Here is where things if not handled with care will tumble and all will be lost. The guy due to this alien habit of drinking was declining physically so was his marriage to a supposedly caring and loving woman. Not much of a physical exercise fellow, his abuse of alcohol problems other than financial strains must be adding to the family saga.
The guys discussed not to dig any deeper into the private lives of the couple who yet don’t have children. That, they say, was more of a mutually agreed thing rather than the presence of any problems on the part of either of them. So the guys are making efforts concentrating on convincing him out of his drinking habits.
Now if care is not taken on how to go about this issue there might be these accusations of trying to create some puritan society which these days doesn’t work even in fictional creations. But then though adults have every right to choose what’s ‘good’ for them, heavy drinking of a family bread-earner couldn’t be about choice but about lunacy. Amidst all this you feel rather dejected when you see things that seem to glamorize alcohol abuse.
I watch local serial drama on local TV channels and foreign channels licensed to be transmitted locally. I see a lot of drinking, much of it having nothing to do with actual story lines. The characters discuss most things with the wine and whisky bottles towering on the table as if they were some recently found relics! It is like they are showing that ‘the good life,’ ‘the high life’ is about guzzling whiskey and wine. Those things these days cost fortunes! Well if the characters have the money to throw away and if indeed those scenes mean something for the story it’s their choice. But then the argument can be raised that drinking scenes of no significance are nothing but romanticizing dangerous habits. Have people stopped discussing serious things over cups of coffee? A nagging question indeed. (By the way I never knew most people in our society lived in such luxurious villas and multi-story residences as the likes we see in the local serial dramas! Hmmm)
Now the trio of peace makers I was telling you about seems to be haggling about how to go about their mission. They would have liked to just slide through things without having to offend either of the couple. The problem is how to do that. One of them is saying that there is no way that they can’t offend the hubby who happened to be a very close friend of the trio. “He has to be told outright that he is the one destroying the marriage!” that is what the fellow is arguing about.
By the way his drinking has become so out of control that household budget was shrinking drastically and fast. Yes she too works and even then the strains are too much. It was those where never words like we’re out teff or there is not enough of anything. It was tough for her to adapt to tight budgets where there are fewer dishes on the table.
The hubby! Well the hubby has all of a sudden made a philosopher out of himself. Every time his wife raises household problems he is telling her that most Ethiopians live in much tougher situations and they can’t be the exceptions. He working in the financial industry the rumors have it he had some side jobs other than his regular employment. Very unlike him they say he isn’t telling his wife about such things if there ever are any. Wish the trio all the luck! They need it, and need it badly!
Talking sense to a heavy drinker, friend or foe, isn’t going to be an open and shut case.
The Ethiopian Herald August 20/2023