Miss Hannah
ALCOHOLISM DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LOUD
Dazzling in a red dress, juggling car keys and smartphone on her hands ,she is appealingly elegant, confident, assertive and very enthusiastic about life, though she insists that she is an introvert. It is hard to believe that just a few months earlier Miss Hannah had a serious bout with low self esteem and didn’t really have much to live for anymore. She had hit rock bottom.
From Social drinker to Alcoholism
This is the story of Hannah …., aged 26, a high school teacher at a reputable institution in Kiambu county. Unlike many stories you have heard before about alcoholics and alcoholism, her story with alcohol doesn’t come with a lot of drama and controversy, no visits to the police stations and no public outbursts or embarrassing moments. Her trip with alcoholism was silent, she attended to her duties daily and did the minimum, just enough to ensure that she does get fired. Once she left work, she would pick herself a bottle or two of her favorite liquor which was usually Gin or Konyagi and head to her place or for absolute privacy go to her cousins place which was nearby. She never really went out to clubs or drunk in noisy pubs, it was just her, her alcohol and her thoughts. She said that sometimes while drunk she would cry for hours for no reasons because she could not recognize who she had become, she was once very ambitious and couldn’t figure out where her ambition and general love for life went, all she was looking forward to was her bottle of gin.
Levuka Treatment Center
Hannah work life and her home life had started being affected by drinking and sometimes she would disappear for days while she was on a drinking binge, it would force her family to look for her and bring her home. That is exactly what happened the last time before she was brought to the Levuka Centre for treatment. At school, the principal and the head of department had noticed that she had changed and wasn’t performing her duties as she did before. They had tried several times to call her to sit down with them for meetings but she always managed to evade them, cleverly. She was hanging on by a thread at work, luckily for her, she still had some discipline even as an alcoholic and never ever drunk during work hours or attended her lessons visibly drunk because this would be the last straw and she would have been fired. As we speak Hannah is back at work and thriving, despite the alcoholism she was never fired, she played safe. On the home front the first person who ever mentioned or insinuated that she could have a drinking problem was her father and he said it as a by the way or a joke. To get the context of her home situation it is important to mention that she already had two brothers who had visited Levuka Center for treatment of their alcoholism and compared to them she was a mild case. The factor that she had two siblings who had already visited the center turned out to be a blessing in disguise for her. The brother who had just finished his stint at the center encouraged her to go and also supported / supports her recovery to this very moment.
Alcoholic Gene.
Hannah says that alcoholism does not have to be loud for it to be a problem and sometimes it’s not because of problems that you become an alcoholic. Sometimes you are just born with the gene that predisposes you to become an alcoholic. She says that she could never really pin point the exact reason why she drunk, while she wasn’t stressed, she was making good money from her side business of rearing and selling chicken and her job as a teacher, she had no relationship problems but she still drunk herself silly.
Life Skills
Hanna is now glowing ,has added healthy weight ,sober, focused and a great peer at Levuka treatment treatment center , where she pops in regularly to encourage the residents undergoing treatment , that is possible to be sober again. She thanks the counselors at Levuka for teaching her life skills, that she now able to relate and socialize with her friends without the need of being high.