What comes to mind when we think of the
deadly, oh I mean deadly diseases. We first think of Aids, Cancer, Diabetes, Stroke, and the like. No doubt that these diseases are deadly! But I will
like to draw our minds to what kills us slowly, gradually from the inside. I
believe in the power of what kills us internally, and that is addiction. I
believe I am not alone on this one, how does it feel when after chewing your
gum, and the next minute, you find it stacked to a shirt you are wearing. What is
the feeling like? So much anger and frustration right, because it becomes so so
difficult to get it off. Sometimes, we don’t even succeed in getting it off
until of course after months and months of thorough washing. The force that
attracts a gum to a shirt is fast and easy. However, getting this gum poses a
bigger problem that we wished it had never gotten stacked to our shirt. Indeed,
it is easy to destroy than to build. This scenario can well be likened to
alcoholism and its associated abuse. It takes just a little pain, eagerness,
frustration, anger, anxiety, a little joy to take a sip of alcohol. However,
this sip grows into two, three, a bottle, and then bottles of alcohol till
one’s life is all about drinking. The saddest part is that, it takes almost
forever to get away from alcohol.
Personally, I have been under the abuse
of alcohol for about ten years of my life. Alcohol was able to change my father
from a lovely person into a completely different, one who was dangerous to live
with. Alcohol made him a two-in-one person. When he drank, be became a mini
beast. He abused the family in many ways. He forcefully took money from my
mother’s little trading business to drink. Other times too, he used every
pessewa of the money he got from laboring to work. When he got drank, he
disturbed the entire neighborhood, he put the house in chaos: he threw away
relevant things, spoils food, scattered everything he could lay his hand on. At
times, he beat us (my siblings and I) and our mother. Things got terribly worse
when he was drunk. But immediately he recovered, he became that lovely, caring
father that anyone could be. This made him even creepy to live with, because
one moment he is laughing with you, and another he is chasing you with a pestle
for money to drink.
I am not, I mean never happy that he
drinks but one thing I know is, he feels remorseful for his actions, he regrets
anytime he recovered so bad that he wishes he will never drink again. But his
past keeps pulling him back anytime he tries. He lost all his possessions, his
home, and his beautiful family in a blink of an eye. Living up to this reality
where we all have to struggle to make a living leaves him in a state of
failure, meaning all those years he worked hard, so hard for us, he only worked
to lose everything in the end.
Like my father, a lot of people, good
people are transformed into devils and beasts because of what alcohol make them
do. They try a lot of times, but it gets even harder stopping. Due to my
personal experience, it has now been my desire to one day help people get out
of the trap of drinking. But it is easier said than done. In other to reach
this dream, I need to understand people and know why they really drink. This
blog is a personal project where I express empathy for alcoholics, sharing their
stories to inspiration to others who drink and those who do not ever want to be
like them. But one thing we need to always remember is that, these people are
just like us. Alcohol only makes them who they are not. They have an inner man,
who is lovely, kind, caring and happy.
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