The life of a closeted alcoholic

“We all know what an alcoholic looks like: Their lives are a mess. They are the irresponsible mother, sister or wife who is always drunk and can barely hold down a job. She is the one that

you see staggering out of the bar, the one who sometimes falls into a

ditch, right? Well, not quite. My name is Jerioth, I am 39 and I am an alcoholic. At a glance, I don’t fit the profile.

LOVE AFFAIR WITH ALCOHOL BEGINS

“My love affair with alcohol, hasn’t always been passionate. In fact, in my teenage and young adulthood years, the relationship was barely there.

“Growing up on a farm in Sagana in Nyeri County, I never saw anyone drinking in our home; our parties did not involve alcohol. My mother is a staunch Christian, an Anglican Church vicar, in fact. My father, the more liberal of the two, also doesn’t drink.

He gave up the bottle when I was a toddler after surviving a bad drunk-driving accident. While my parents never really spoke about alcohol, we all knew that what they felt about it. As an unspoken pact of sorts, my two brothers and I never came home

drunk.“I was an impressionable 20-year-old student at a city college when I had my first alcoholic drink – a glass of sweet red wine. I hated the taste of it but I loved the buzz that I felt afterwards. For the next five years, I continued drinking most

weekends, usually because most of my friends did – and for that buzz. I graduated from college, got my first job in office administration for a private midlevel company in Nairobi and then met Mr. Right. Life was good.

“When I started earning a salary, drinking became a sort of reward for a job well done; I drank on payday, after a long day or when I nailed a business deal on the side. When I met Chris, the man who was to become my husband, we took up this routine.

We drank to celebrate our little victories together. When we got our first apartment together in Donholm Estate, on our ruracio, when he got a promotion, when we bought out first car… we got drunk.

“Chris was a heavier drinker than I but he limited most of his drinking to Friday and Saturday nights. While I sometimes got the cravings, my drinking was not a problem… at least, that was how it seemed. I could go weeks without drinking and when I

drank, just four of five glasses of wine would do. As our financial status improved, I acquired a taste for cream liqueurs. Chris bought most of it. You know the way husbands bring home flowers when they are happy with their wives? Mine would come

home with a bottle of liqueur. All the alcohol stayed in the wardrobe in our bedroom.

“I had three children, all girls, in almost as many years. I stayed off alcohol during my pregnancies but as soon as a child got weaned, we would go out and I would drink a years’ worth. Another celebration. Then our picture-perfect marriage started getting

cracks. We fought, mostly about money. We came from different socio-economic backgrounds; Chris’ family was rich and mine wasn’t. I thought we had enough to raise our family and support my parents, and he didn’t. We started having small

arguments, which in time grew into explosive fights. Soon enough, he began seeing someone else.

“Towards the end of our eight-year marriage, I spent many nights alone with a glass of liqueur. When he finally moved out of our home to be with his new love, I retreated further into my shell. As the post-election chaos threatened to tear the country apart

in 2008, my heart was breaking into a million little pieces.

“Alcohol became a part of my daily existence. I budgeted for it the same way I budgeted for food. I drank mostly at night, after my children, who were now between the ages of eight and three, went to bed. I could say that I lived for that moment when I

would be alone to finally take that first sip.

“After a while, I couldn’t afford my children’s upkeep and three or four bottles of cream liqueurs weekly so I switched to vodka. A quarter bottle of vodka mixed with a glass of lime juice would help me forget all my problems for a while. About a year in, I

would wake up feeling lethargic in the mornings, which prompted me to start drinking in the mornings. This graduated to carrying vodka concealed in my water bottle to work, to school events, weddings and even church.

“By 2010, I was no longer drinking because I was feeling unhappy; I was drinking to get through the day. My addiction was now physical. At this point a litre of liqueur would only give me a fleeting buzz. I also avoided drinking in social places, as I was

afraid of losing control. I would pop into a party and then rush home to indulge in my vodka. If I had to make a choice to buy either a drink or lunch, I chose the drink.

“While I was often consumed by feelings of guilt, I never thought of myself as an alcoholic. True, I drank almost every day but I also held down a job and I was running a home and raising three children on my own. I told myself that I was fine.

My biggest worry then wasn’t the drinking, it was getting caught. I lived in Komarock Estate, which was quite close knit. We held court meetings from time to time and I knew my neighbours held me in very high regard. What would they think if they saw

the dozens of Kibao vodka bottles and sometimes cheaper liquor that I threw out with my trash?

GREAT LENGTHS TO HIDE ADDICTION

“Like many addicts, I went to great lengths to hide my addiction. I always had gum and perfume in my handbag. At work, I ate lunch alone so that I could sip undisturbed. I am sure my children saw it but I suppose they had become conditioned to protect

me. At work, my output deteriorated. I was slower, grumpier, and more careless. While no one ever really confronted me, I got asked questions about my bloodshot eyes and tired-looking face. As the mistress of disguise I had become, I always had an

excuse at hand – I was going to night school or I had stayed up late with a sick child. At a glance, my excuses made sense. After all, I was a dedicated, struggling, single mother.

“Then, one cold Monday morning in April of  2014, after a particularly thirsty Sunday evening, I woke up to find myself sprawled on the living room floor, my empty bottle of vodka lying beside me.

My eldest daughter who was 13 had gotten her siblings ready and they’d gone to school. I knew that if I didn’t do something about my drinking, I was going to lose my children. Maybe not physically, but I was afraid that they’d hate me.

“Beaten, after almost a decade of drinking alone, I went to a Facebook page and poured out the shame and guilt that was tormenting me. I was just seeking to offload but Teresia, a female group member who is a counsellor and a recovering addict herself

heard my cry for help and reached out to me. She initiated a friendship that culminated in a three month long rehabilitation programme. When I went to rehab, my brothers could not believe it. How could I have an alcohol problem when neither of them had

ever seen me drunk? How had they missed the signs?

“It’s been 21 months since I had my last drink. I would be lying if I said I haven’t had cravings. I am yet to share this part of my life with my ageing parents but I would like to think that I have overcome the shame.”

TELL-TALE SIGNS OF CLOSET ALCOHOLISM

Alcohol abuse is present across socio-economic groups and ages, so a closet drinker doesn’t fit any particular profile, making it harder to spot them. While the closeted alcoholic is often high functioning and might appear normal to the rest of the world,

author Sarah Benton in her book Understanding the High Functioning Alcoholic says that alcohol addiction can’t go completely unnoticed. With a closeted alcoholic though, the signs aren’t so obvious and you need to know where to look.

Here are some red flags:

• The most obvious sign of a closeted alcoholic is that they drink alone. You may be aware of the fact that they drink but you have never seen them drunk.

• They will try to conceal their addiction; watch out for constant eye bags or constantly looking tired and wearing heavy makeup.

• If someone frequently complains of feeling lethargic in the mornings, it is a bad sign.

• Even the best closet drinker will have uncharacteristic behaviour. Watch out for patterns of missed events.

• If you know someone who carries alcohol disguised as other drinks, they could be suffering from an alcohol addiction.

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A BIG PROBLEM

A 2014 report by NACADA states that up to 13.3 percent of Kenyans are currently using alcohol – that’s at least four million people. A 2015 global report on alcoholism says that at least 4.9 per cent of the world’s population suffers from an alcohol disorder.

Alcoholism clearly is a big problem.

Jerioth and others like her who choose to drink alone at home after dark go uncounted, meaning that the problem is more severe than it looks. Psychiatrist Prof Lukoye W’Atwoli, who heads the mental health department at The Moi University, blames the rise

of closeted alcoholics on societal attitudes: Women are not expected to drink or be seen drunk, and so they drink at home, away from judgment. This makes it even harder for a female closeted alcoholic to seek help.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

According to Prof. W’Atwoli, you can help a closeted alcoholic by speaking up. To be sure of your suspicions, keep a record of the red flags. You may also ask a third party if they see what you see. If you are lucky, just speaking out your suspicions might

be all the trigger they need to get back on the straight and narrow.

On a national level though, this problem, he says, should be taken up by medical practitioners.

“Interventions in a hospital setting would work best. Since it is impossible to tell who might or might not be drinking at a glance, health workers could come up with a system where the issue of alcohol use is raised with all adults,” he says.

ALCOHOL AND A WOMAN’S BODY

While the common assumption is that those that drink every day are at a greater risk of becoming alcoholics, experts think that binge drinkers are at a higher risk. That woman who only indulges Friday nights may be at a higher risk of addiction.

Being a woman also makes you more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol.

“Physiologically, women are smaller and their bodies contain less water. A similar amount of alcohol will have a greater effect on a woman than in a man. When it does happen, it affects her quicker and more dramatically,” Prof W’Atwoli explains.

To avoid falling into this rut, if you must drink, keep it to the minimum drinking levels. According to Prof W’Atwoli, one unit a day is normal. If you have more than four units every day, you are at a high risk of addiction.