FORTY EIGHT HOURS

I returned to the half way home after a two day stay in Colombo. I came back late in the afternoon yesterday and decided to have lunch in one of the wayside restaurants that populate the coast line in this area. I spent a very fruitful afternoon not only having a good lunch but also organizing the logistics for the weekend when my fellow students are due here to attend a joint study session before we sit for our exams next week. I returned to the half way home around four PM planning an easy evening and early night to recoup and get ready for the intensive study program I intend to commence from today.

I was accosted by a visibly agitated Doctor who had noted that I had returned to the half way home early in the afternoon and then subsequently gone out again. It transpired that he needed my services urgently to help him out with one of the Residents who had to be taken to hospital for the customary checkup before admission to the Halfway Home. I knew this Resident as he had been here before and much against the Doctor wishes discharged himself prematurely without completing his program. He was an Alcoholic!

I really was in no mood to take care of belligerent alcoholics familiar or otherwise and certainly didn’t want to spoil what had been a very pleasant stay in Colombo getting involved in the admission procedures of the Institute. Nevertheless I acquiesced very reluctantly and marched off to the Residents room prepared to use my rather intimidating powers of persuasion to ensure that this guy got ready pronto and went to hospital. The sight that greeted me made me pause and throttle the words I was about to deliver in anger. This was how I would have looked like in May 2010!!! Empathy took over and I quickly changed my tactics and eventually found myself accompanying the guy to the Hospital. So much for my relaxed evening!!!

The gist of what he conveyed to me was a familiar lament. The reasons equally uninspiring, the conclusions and results boringly identical. But my usual sarcastic one liners and wit was tempered with a feeling of Deja Vu and a cold feeling of realization of how this had happened to me not just once but on several occasions. The Consultant Doctor at the Hospital was a Psychiatrists I used for second opinions and I was able to quickly get the Resident attended to. My concern that there was risk of seizure due to withdrawals was put at rest and the Doctors rather bemused look as to what I was doing in Hospital dressed in what I refer to as my HADU outfits in Sinhalese, generally consisting of old T-Shirts with holes in strategic places and my trade mark crumpled track pants was replaced with a wink, when I explained that I hadn’t come to him for his opinion but due to the emergency at hand and I had progressed quite well, thank you, since I consulted him in February.

On the way back to the Home I was preoccupied with an analysis I had done when researching the best way to overcome alcoholism. There are those who seem to able to give up drinking without any repercussions or the issues that many of us go through when we are forced to accept that we have a drinking problem when things really hit rock bottom. They stop and stay away from the booze for the rest of their existence! Then there are those who manage to do so with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs and after some trial and error end up leading lives of sobriety. Then there are the more troublesome cases such as mine that require hospitalization and a period of sanitization and repeated relapses before sobriety with occasional lapses is finally achieved. The last category are probably in the eyes of many the most incorrigible and often viewed with disdain and ridiculed by many who don’t have an alcoholic problem and cannot understand or comprehend how this can happen. They dismiss these individuals as not being strong willed and capable human beings!!! They don’t know or care to acknowledge that they might end up in the same boat one day! Life has a strange way of dealing off the deck.

Back in my room after finishing my work and listening to music, tired and exhausted I looked back at the last forty eight hours. It had been great. I had a pleasant evening the previous day, Saro read my blog and was the first to post a comment, my Mother-In-Law thought it was fabulous and I should get the material published but by far the best moment for me was the incident that occurred when I left the Doctors room at the Hospital. I couldn’t read the Doctors expression but his tone and the look conveyed subtleness in meaning that I have yet to comprehend. Looking at me straight in the eye he said “Thank you for taking care of my Patient! “ My re-joiner “No problems Doc! I have been there”, accompanied by a wry smile was followed with a tear drop from my eye!