Tackle country's alcohol-drugs epidemic

There are people who stagger in and out of bars all day; and for some, the cumulative lifecycle value of production net of consumption may never turn positive. Alcohol and substance abuse is a monster whose ‘shape’ we hardly know; much akin to a doodle—scribblings by young children and toddlers.

Casual empiricism (eyeballing) suggests a pattern of higher dependency among those of high birth order (younger). They may have entered adulthood when their parents were already materially and emotionally exhausted, and with detachment and alienation from older siblings.

How did we get here? A drunk asks this question when he can’t remember how he got home.

Decades of decline in real wages (adjusted for inflation) and low and erratic returns on agriculture and small enterprises meant men could no longer sufficiently cater for their families and more women had to, therefore, go out and work. The increase in women’s participation in paid work meant less time for bonding with their children.

Child development literature shows adequate maternal care, especially in the first year, activates pathways that buffer an otherwise genetically vulnerable offspring from later maladaptive behaviour—for instance, alcohol and substance abuse, violence and crime (see, for example, Richard E. Tremblay’s Developmental Origins of Aggression).

The economic stress may lead to family disintegration, sometimes driven by a man’s desire for more children than the woman can sufficiently manage due to income and time constraints.

Drunkenness reinforces a cycle of inadequate male support, more female labour force participation, and less mother-child bonding, to the interplay between inadequate maternal care and antisocial behaviour later in life.

In experiments spanning three decades, Indian pharmacologist Ram Nath Chopra and colleagues reported the beneficial effects of lecithin and glucose in decreasing the duration and intensity of withdrawal symptoms in the mass treatment of opium addicts.

Their findings were reported in the Indian Medical Gazette (March 1935, May 1937, May 1939 and July 1940), Indian Journal of Medical Research (January 1935, January 1939 and July 1940), Current Science (July 1935 and November 1939) and United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics (1957).

They reported that lecithin toned down anxiety disorders that ultimately drive addiction. There may be a need for dietary adjustments, increasing lecithin availability in the general population through food fortification and awareness of the role of nutrition in rehabilitation.

Professionals should help us understand the causal factors of our alcohol-drug epidemic lest society undergoes irreversible degeneration, which is like burning wood to ashes yet we can’t reconstitute the ashes to wood.

John T. Mukui, Nairobi