Devil's brew

The first thing in the human personality that dissolves in excessive alcohol is dignity- how true, how painfully true. They found him lying in filth, totally drenched in rain water, He was there the whole of previous night, totally inebriated and unconscious. Coming to know of that, his wife and teenage daughter came running, the daughter was sobbing uncontrollably. His wife remained unmoved, muttering, cursing her own fate.  The daughter tried giving him some water, but blood started trickling from his mouth and he breathed his last - the wife wailed loudly and said “ see, only when they die they stop drinking, even if it is ‘gangajal’, with all the vehemence only an abused and harassed wife would feel.

His father worked as a watchman in our house for few years, but now being old and infirm, he ekes out a measly living doing some menial jobs. Everybody’s hearts reached out to that old man, whose glassy stare had many untold sad stories of pain and loss. How alcohol can have a stranglehold on both the worlds – the territory of the poor, illiterate, downtrodden and the highly elite, sophisticated, privileged domain of the rich, is unbelievable, pushing people into abysmal pits of shame, despair and helplessness, destroying reason, creating disharmony and chaos. 

I remember the story of a man who was totally addicted to alcohol and was abandoned by his family. One day while walking he sees a handgun for sale in a shop window and he gets greatly tempted to buy that with the last few dollars he had in his pocket, and then go home and put it on his temple and pull the trigger, saying good bye to a failed life, seeped and drenched in alcohol. But resisting his temptation, he walked into a library which was right ahead - by acting upon that one stray thought his life was straightened forever. Seeing many books on success and motivation he casually picked them up and  started reading and got totally hooked. His reading continued on and on and he found answers to many of his problems. He became clear in his head, he turned pro-active and positive. He came out of alcoholism to become a successful writer and publisher himself.
How I wish alcoholics get such ‘stray’ thoughts which will stop them from going totally astray. 

How I wish they see the joys of life instead of getting devoured by ‘the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster’! “All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men...” to prove this in toto, the morning newspaper says – ‘man rapes his own daughter in an inebriated state’ – ah…the man who is the reason for her birth, becomes the reason for her emotional death and permanent scarring. Alcohol, you devil’s brew, how much more poison you want to spread around?