Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, 52-year-old Ann Mathu has reinvented herself after being consumed and bogged down by alcoholism for 20 years.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, 52-year-old Ann Mathu has reinvented herself after being consumed and bogged down by alcoholism for 20 years.
10 years sober today, it is hard to imagine that Ann, a former Miss Kenya runner-up, was once an alcoholic who lost her husband, children and job due to the disease. Ann is today an author, motivational speaker and campaigner against alcohol and drug abuse.
Her book Sober Again details her journey from alcoholism to sobriety.“Addiction is disease and alcoholics should not be judged harshly,” says Ann reflectively as the interview begins.
Ann was introduced to alcohol by her father in the 1970s.
“I loved my father very much. He loved me too especially because I was named after his mother. He gave me alcohol before I was 10. That time I was still in primary school,” she recounts.
She started smoking cigarettes as well at that tender age because her father used to send her to light them for him.
“My father was an alcoholic and definitely I got it from him…All I did in my youth was to indulge in alcohol.” In 1976, after her secondary school education, she would comfortably gulp two glasses of beer "without feeling inebriated".
PEAK OF BEER GUZZLING
The year 1982 would become the peak of her beer guzzling. After becoming a first-runners-up in a national beauty competition, she became famous, and the fame came with more alcohol.
“I was famous and had so many fans who would buy for me alcohol. I graduated to taking the most expensive liquors, I thought life was so good.”
She found employment but continued imbibing even during working hours, consequently losing her job.
She found herself taking cheap liquors like chang’aa and busaa since she could no longer afford to buy bottled beer or hard liquor and moved from a four-bedroom house in up-market estate to live in a shanty at the outskirts of Thika town.
“I knew all the bars in the slum. I could sell anything in the house because I had to sustain my habit. I sunk so low.”
“My husband died in 2004 from alcoholism-related ailments and my children were taken away from me because I could not nurture them. I was left alone and destitute because all I had from the relationship was taken by my husband's relatives who accused me of causing his death,” she adds. It was only after taking jet fuel to satiate her thirst and coming face to face to a near-death experience that she decided to change for good.
“I vomited blood and was in a very bad state. It is during this incident that family members picked me and took me to a rehabilitation centre,” she said.
Ann has never looked back after the rehabilitation in Asumbi, Homabay.
She made her story known to the public for the first time in 2008 and by using her experience, she has been able to demonstrate that it is possible to sober up for those addicted to alcohol. She worked for Asumbi Rehabilitation Centre and the National Campaign against Drug Abuse Authority (NACADA) as a campaigner and a motivational speaker.
Today, Ann currently a consultant, working with corporates and institutions across the country, and gives talks to the young and the old, men and women.
No comments:
Post a Comment