In a study of drug and alcohol abuse trends, carried out by the South African Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (Sacendu), 44% of patients treated for substance abuse in the Eastern Cape study were primarily dependent on alcohol.
In a study of drug and alcohol abuse trends, carried out by the South African Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (Sacendu), 44% of patients treated for substance abuse in the Eastern Cape study were primarily dependent on alcohol.
At the workshop where these statistics were released, it was also made known that one in 10 people who drink is an alcoholic. Caroline King looks at how alcohol addiction affects alcoholics' families, and the communities they live in.
In the Grahamstown area, unemployment, domestic violence, and the spread of HIV/Aids are the problems most aggravated by excessive drinking. Judith Rungani, a social worker at the Grahamstown Area Distress and Relief Association (Gadra), voiced her concerns about alcohol abuse in Grahamstown East. She said unemployment and drinking were two turbines in a vicious cycle. People drank because they were jobless and bored, and they remained jobless because they just sat around and drank. "Some people don’t even look for jobs. They just wait for grants. They also don’t think about tomorrow. They sometimes spend all of their money on alcohol and then have no money left for food the next day." The brewing and sale of dirt-cheap, and sometimes dangerously toxic concoctions, such as "umtshovalale", only spurred on alcohol abuse among people who earned little or nothing. Umtshovalale costs as little as R2 a litre and is illegally made from a quickly brewed mix of water, dry yeast, sugar, and other chemicals that can include methylated spirits, rotten bread, pineapples, brake fluid, or Brasso. “It’s just to get people drunk – they’ll buy anything,” Rungani said. Families also took immense strain when faced with a member who couldn't control their drinking. Famsa is an NGO that strives to support communities to "build, restore, and maintain functional relationships", and the director of the Grahamstown branch, Anne Harris, said when relationships were negatively affected by alcohol abuse, people often couldn't work on the relationship until they had dealt with the addiction. Although not always because of alcohol, Harris said many women became victims of domestic violence when their partners were drunk. When their partner was drunk, to avoid getting into a fight, they were also less likely to practise safe sex, or negotiate using a condom. Harris had counselled women who had told her, "I’m HIV positive because my husband slept around." Rungani and Harris both said drug and alcohol users were getting younger. Rungani said unfortunately people couldn't be stopped from doing things they wanted to do, but she suggested raising awareness in the form of anti-drinking campaigns in people's home languages on Radio Grahamstown. Rungani also said there were no AA meetings in the township for people who wanted to try and deal with their drinking problems, and many people were put off participating, because they had travel to unfamiliar places, such as the Rhodes University campus, far from their homes. "They don’t see the danger in drinking umtshovalale, or spending all of their money on drink. We can never stop them – we must rather educate people," Rungani said.
