Wanaume kweli wako na shida in Kenya. This is a pandemic.
You have to sacrifice some things for the ones you love more. The lesson is, be wary of what you love dearly, it’ll cost you.
Believe you me alcoholism is pandemic. It has affected me personally even right now I’m trying to help someone who has this problem. Yaani he keeps relapsing. It’s a frustrating problem.
Alcohol is poison, and if one views it that way it’s possible to avoid addiction. The people a person hangs around matter a lot. I think that apart from parental strictness, there was something in the dark brown colour of beer bottles that just used to scare me as a kid. They looked too horrible to hold something good. Then there were the frequent fights you would hear about in bars, people throwing bottles all over, and falling off those tall stools. Then the effect of seeing some mzee just looking silly, helpless and childish never seemed admirable. That helped, so much so that even as a young guy, bars and drunk people never looked attractive.
Umfortunately we are in a world that happily promotes things that are clearly destructive, and makes fun of what is good. Alcohol can look very attractive, but it’s a trap. You just have to choose.