My daily triumph over alcohol addiction

By JONATHAN KOMEN

NAIROBI, KENYA: Her striking physique and youthful beauty point to Brenda Ochieng’s former life as a classic fashion model. She made it big in modelling circles and even formed her own modelling company through which she popularised African clothing. However, Brenda, 47, couldn’t really enjoy the high moments on the runway as long as she maintained a close relationship with alcohol. Heavy drinking, she says, ruined her huge potential.

Every time she suffered a setback due to her abuse of alcohol, Brenda would promise to kick the bottle, but her resolve never lasted and she was sacked from 47 jobs for excessive drinking. Every time she got a sobering shock, say after a sacking, she would vow never to touch alcohol again, but she always went back – for 17 years.

Like many people who abuse alcohol, Brenda easily found someone else to blame. She says she was pushed into alcoholism by her family and even believed her parents hated her. So she took up drinking to “find solace from this personal challenge”.

Yet, Brenda was brought up in a ‘normal’ family.

“I had the kind of life many people envy. I never lacked anything. My father, Jacob Ochieng, was a lecturer at Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) and my mother, Grace Ochieng, worked at the Income Tax Department (now Kenya Revenue Authority). They were good providers.”

In this model family, Brenda, the fourth of five children, grew up with low self-esteem. She always felt she was not as good as her siblings. She picked up signals fast and could study the mood of her parents, whom she felt were always critical of her every action.

For example, she took up her first job as a banker because her father insisted. If she had her way, she would have picked broadcast journalism, something she passionately wanted.

“I accepted it to please him. I did the course and, luckily, got a job with a bank in Mombasa,” she says. After a few years at the bank, her elder sister, Hellen, encouraged her to quit banking and take up a secretarial job. She didn’t hesitate as she was bored with banking. Brenda joined Valley Business School to study administration and thereafter secured a job at the German Agency for Technical Corporation (GTZ) in 1990.

“It was here that I started to redefine my destiny: Banking was my father’s idea while administration was my sister’s. I felt I should stop living in other people’s shadows. I started to look for my own passion through the arts,” she says.

She auditioned at the French Cultural Centre in Nairobi and was successful. That marked the start of her journey into the entertainment world, which included modelling for fashion shows.

She became famous, got advertising jobs and featured in newspapers as a top model.

Brenda was associated with top modelling houses in the country such as Surazuri, and she enjoyed high society life. Her commanding voice landed her many jobs in advertising campaigns. Indeed, one bank in Nairobi even kept her voice on their telephone system for a long time.

With the fame came an acquired taste for fine alcoholic drinks. And it wasn’t long before the abuse started to take its toll. “I stopped drinking when I hit rock bottom,” Brenda says.

Rock bottom was where she found herself after being kicked out of the Landmark Forum’s International Leader’s Programme, an opportunity she felt was helping her build a good character and pick up the pieces.

At the same time, she lost her office in Chester House, where she was running her modelling agency, Dancing Mannequins, because she stopped paying rent after yet another relapse. She was also unable to maintain her apartment near State House and had to move back to her parents’ house in Kileleshwa. That was four years ago, at age 43.

“My parents never knew I had a drinking problem. I kept it secret because I knew how much it would hurt them,” she says. She told her mother after moving back home.

Brenda, who later studied psychological and addiction counselling, says the most overpowering reason for ending her relationship with the bottle was her brother’s death due to alcoholism. He was taken to rehab but it was too late.

“When my brother (the last born) died in July 2007, I wondered why God had kept me alive and resolved to stay away from alcohol and spend my life helping others. I became serious about pursuing counselling as a career.”

Her brother’s death confirmed the three eventualities for alcoholics — jail, rehab institutions and death.

After mourning her brother, Brenda checked herself into rehab. For the second time.

The first time was between April and July, 2006, when she had gone to Asumbi Karen. But rehab for her was not an instant coffee fix. Once out of rehab, she relapsed and continued to enjoy her drink.

“I could not accept that I was drinking too much because at the end of the day, I was able to drive home safely. As long as I drove without incident, I was fine with my drink. I wouldn’t allow anyone to criticise my driving under the influence of alcohol,” she says.

While she drank, her business thrived. She wore African-style clothes. The media looked  for her to offer tips on African fashion. But alcohol would not allow her to excel. Her excessive drinking eventually exposed her to tuberculosis (TB).

“I had no money for medication since I had misused what I had. I could not raise the Sh40,000 required for a private hospital so I went to a public clinic, which was free of charge. I had lost control of my drinking and I was afraid to tell anyone that I had TB because it is perceived to mean one also has HIV and Aids,” she says.

Brenda, however, could not stop drinking. “I swallowed my medication with vodka and became disillusioned. My sister took me to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed depression and acute anxiety worsened by alcohol. But I continued to drink a spirit called Sapphire,” she says.

Despite her sister’s efforts, Brenda kept drinking heavily.

The second time Brenda went to rehab was January to April, 2007. This time, it was Asumbi Ridgeways (now Asumbi Kenmere). Since some of the counsellors had met her during her first stint in rehab, they monitored her progress keenly.

Gradually, she was able to kick the bottle out of her life. Now when she looks back, she can clearly see the years she wasted abusing alcohol.

On relapsing, Brenda says: “There are certain people, places and things that remind you of alcohol and make you want to drink. That, and thinking you are now fine, as I did after the first time I went to rehab.” Then you take ‘just one’ and you are back to square one.

She names two specific factors that cause many addicts to relapse following rehab – public shame and guilt – and says addicts are supposed to make amends in order to be free from the guilt and shame.

“Addiction robs one’s feelings. We don’t have friends, we take hostages, manipulate people to be with us. In rehabilitation programmes and sobriety, true affections begin to return but we must go slow and are advised not to seek relationships until a year or more has passed after you stop drinking.

“The fashion industry teaches us to ‘strut your stuff’ – show what you’re made of and in effect, show it off. I have talked about my journey in the hope that someone else will have hope and see light at the end of the tunnel,” says Brenda who now works as a counsellor with The Bridge Centre in Garden Estate, Nairobi.

Since last week, nearly 100 people have died after drinking illicit brews in Central, Rift Valley, Western, Eastern and Nairobi regions.

Most of them promised not to go back to drinking the first time, but found themselves still holding onto the bottle.

National Agency for Campaign against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Nacada) chairman John Mututho said the reported figure was a fraction of those poisoned daily by the brews.