Ratanjit had picked his moment right. The guitarist had just launched into an extended solo, perfect for bringing out the inner teenager in the smart, thirtysomething crowd at the popular Mumbai bar. He could already see two of his colleagues from the bank lurch to their feet, ties askew as they sloppily toasted the band. As he slipped past the women’s toilet he made no eye contact while he palmed a tiny plastic bottle from Shirin. Seconds later, he was chopping up its contents into two powdery lines with his Amex gold card inside the men’s WC.
When Ratanjit emerged five minutes later, the world had changed. The bass was pounding like the heartbeat of some primeval beast. Felt good...mmmm ...sniff!. Those dopes were still sloshing their beer all over their shirt fronts. Oh, he’d totally show them once he got the Tokyo quotes in the morning. Come to think of it, that idiot boss, too. And Shirin...he just wanted to rip that faux Prada top off. Oh, yes.Meet Ratanjit Singh, 37, blueblood Rajput, IIM Calcutta-trained forex trader. And cokehead.
"F*** this. I just can’t take it anymore," she sobbed into her cellphone. "Tomorrow I’m checking into that clinic. For sure. So you guys won’t be seeing me for awhile." Pia had quit her job at a design shop four days ago and wasn’t going anywhere near a rehab clinic, certainly not halfway through the mother of all benders. Towards the end she had to be restrained from taking her clothes off at a party. Yet, a month later she had a new job at a higher salary. "See my new work!" she flipped open her laptop. "Let’s go drinking, I want to celebrate." That’s Pia Mukherjee, 26, assistant creative director and alcoholic.
Melanie couldn’t figure why Srini’s good-looking friend Arvind was trying so hard to impress her. She’d clocked the Mercedes they’d driven here in, the Rolex on his wrist, and the fact that the bar tab was jumping by four figures every new round. And now there was another drink waiting when she returned from the bathroom. But it couldn’t hurt to be nice to him. After all, he did go to boarding school with Srini, WHO she considered one of the cool young managers at the food mnc where she was a junior executive.When she woke up, she was naked, bruised all over, in a strange house, and had absolutely no memory of the previous evening. After awhile, she began to cry quietly.
Arvind Nair, US-educated date rape drug predator and Melanie Alney, victim.
These aren’t sketches for a bad movie plot. They are true tales from the seamy side of urban India’s high life. In a country that extolled the use of intoxicating plant distillations a millennium ago and where you can still buy marijuana from holy men, it’s hardly surprising that people use drugs.
What is surprising though is the incidence of a culture of alcohol and drug abuse among a class whose education and general awareness should theoretically have keep it out of harm’s way. In India’s metros, yuppie substance abuse is virtually everywhere you care to look.
The traditional picture of the alcohol and drug user has been steadily changing over the past decade, from the ganja-smoking beggar or the drunken mill hand to that of the white-collar professional in well-paid fields like information technology and financial services. And quite often that professional is a "her", not a "him", as society’s acceptance of women drinking and smoking melds unhappily with the greater access a new generation of financially independent and mobile women now have.
Although alcohol abuse is the most common form of trouble with intoxicants, this may have a lot to do with the fact that buying and drinking it generally involves no breaking of laws. It’s also a lot easier and less expensive to get a drink than to buy drugs. The illegality also makes people cautious about admitting to drug use. By the standards of alcoholics, most chronic drug users are still deep in the closet. Perhaps why alcohol abuse is better documented than other drugs.
The Kripa Foundation is probably the world’s biggest NGO working with addicts, having rehabilitated scores of alcoholics and drug users through its 20 deaddiction centres in India. And its figures have shown a dramatic rise in alcoholism in the 18-30 age group—with the number doubling in 2002 alone. But what founder-member and psychiatrist Dr R.N. Jerajani finds most alarming is the rising number of women who drink. Jerajani has dealt with some 30,000 alcoholics in his 30-year career and he believes that with the easy availability their numbers have only increased. He also cites socio-economic factors—like a more ambitious youth, the promise of more material gains in a growing economy, globalisation that makes young people rate success by international standards, nuclear families and lonely elders—all of which are contributing to the problem.
The Indian government hasn’t published a comprehensive nationwide study of alcohol and drug abuse, and the figures from ngos typically are extrapolations made from numbers of the areas they do cover. Yet the relevant statistics from countries that do measure these things are eye-opening.
Like for the US, where a tenth of the population is alcohol-dependent and over 20 per cent have been so at some point in their lives. In the UK, when the price of cocaine on the street dropped—by 75 per cent over the last four years—the number of deaths linked to its use doubled (over 2002-03). Newspaper statistics talked of 6,40,000 people using cocaine in 2003 alone.
Thankfully, Indian cocaine users are still some way off that number. But the users of coke or charlie, as it is usually known, constitute a near-perfect demographic slice of Indian yuppiedom. The cities with the heaviest use, Mumbai and Delhi, have an estimated 5-10 retail-level coke dealers who are regulars in the trade with a steady clientele. The sundry Africans, West Asians and East Europeans who make it to the crime pages of newspapers when they get arrested are wholesalers. Their worlds rarely overlap with the dkny-clad users in 5-star hotel bathrooms.
At about Rs 3,000 a gram (15-20 lines or hits), it’s a drug whose price has limited its spread so far. Yet this number includes senior managers, industrialists and media stars, apart from the obligatory glitterati that seems to come with cocaine territory anywhere in the world. Clearly these people have not let the recent images of a stumbling, hideously bloated Diego Maradona being escorted to yet another deaddiction clinic deter them.
It’s essentially the same demographic that is well-informed enough to know about—and wealthy enough to use—other drugs that are associated with the partying life in the developed world. These include ketamine, a horse tranquiliser; Ecstasy, which has moved from the rave culture to the mainstream; and even Viagra, which offers a rather different high. They also include the thoroughly alarming "date rape" drugs like rohypnol and gamma hydroxy butyric acid (also known as gbh, or grievous bodily harm!), which are used to lull a victim into acquiescent semi-consciousness, the better to take advantage of her.
Like cocaine, such drugs are also illegal though they aren’t as addictive as alcohol and cocaine. Ecstasy can be addictive in rare cases but long-term use is associated more with memory problems and psychotic behaviour. Ketamine is habit-forming, but isn’t physically addictive. The greater danger with these substances is in the short term. Their effect on people can be unpredictable, and dramatic behavioural changes, unconsciousness, coma and death aren’t unknown.
Intoxicants like nicotine, heroin, alcohol and cocaine are different. They are highly addictive. Most people know, at least second-hand, how hard it is to kick cigarettes. Heroin is so addictive and dangerous that regular users end up either reformed or dead. Alcohol and cocaine are very addictive but at least allow users to maintain all the outward manifestations of a normal life, despite some unpleasant side-effects (see box).
This may be why addiction still isn’t treated sufficiently seriously as a disease, one that requires specialist care rather than mere self-control. In the absence of detailed statistics, cocaine users only have Maradona’s tragedy to go on as a cautionary tale. But it would be equally salutary to take a hard look at what we know about alcohol abuse.
Heart disease and cancer are the world’s two biggest killers. Yet alcoholism, which ranks No. 3, isn’t recognised as a disease. Only at its most recent Geneva convention did the who accept that alcoholism is a disease. Social beliefs and acceptance are even further away. Few of us would believe that an alcoholic is an ill person and not just an irresponsible fellow given more to self-indulgence. And when it’s a woman, attributes such as "loose character" and "low morals" are quickly affixed to the already poor definition, explains Ramila A., 49, an ex-alcoholic who’s been sober for a decade and now works to help others out of it.
But this is a chronic, manageable disease much like diabetes or hypertension, says Dr Jerajani. Research, in fact, has debunked many myths about alcohol consumption and alcoholism. For one, alcohol is a primary disorder, not the symptom of another disease or of emotional problems. Studies show that as many people with untroubled childhoods and good education, rewarding careers have become alcoholics.
Like Bhushan P. who says he can’t find a single reason in his growing years to attribute to his ‘drinking’. "I couldn’t understand how my brother who is also fond of a drink and who introduced me to it could stop but I couldn’t." Drinking consistently may create dependence but this physical thing is in itself not alcoholism. Not being able to cork the bottle is, as Ramila explains.
India has a few organisations that specialise in dealing with alcohol and drug abuse (box: That First Step). Alcoholics Anonymous and its sibling Narcotics Anonymous both have very active Indian arms. AA has seen over 2,50,000 alcoholics kick the habit in India. Kripa has put over 10,000 people back on their sober feet. Shanthi Ranganathan’s TT Ranganathan Clinical Research Foundation in Chennai has helped nearly 20,000 patients in its 25 years. "About 55 per cent of them are able to lead a sober life while some stay on the borderline, alternating between relapse and recovery," she says.
All of them use counselling and member support as their biggest crutch. While Kripa has a fixed, three-month, deaddiction programme, AA works as a membership where as members you attend meetings every day and help one another dodge those weak moments. Medicines can help to alleviate the pain of the chemical dependence but only a holistic programme of counselling and fellow support can give the patient the strength to tide over the many terrible moments.
Essentially, it boils down to one simple rule: if alcohol is affecting your life or if you’re using hard drugs, seek help now. Some of the steps may involve compromises with your lifestyle or even seem embarrassingly cheesy. But there’s no loss of dignity involved. Better to be earnest and compromised than wrecked or dead.
By Charubala Annuncio & Hari Menon
