When there is impenetrable darkness all around, one has to find light from within. That is what Hemant had to do. But, that light evaded him for 10 long years, when he said he plumbed the depths. “I had fallen so low, I knew it was almost impossible for me to climb out of the abyss,” said Hemant.

Hemant Giri’s story is part of Gaon Connection and WHO SEARO’s joint social campaign – Meri Pyaari Zindagi – to raise awareness on alcohol abuse and how to fight alcoholism like Hemant did. He has been sober for the past 25 years.   

Audio stories, video stories and memes make up Meri Pyaari Zindagi whose stories are narrated by Neelesh Misra, founder of Gaon Connection. Misra uses the powerful tool of story telling to address the ever present and ever growing threat to physical and mental health in the country brought about, among other things, by alcohol abuse in both the young and the old. 

Also Read: ‘Meri Pyaari Zindagi’: Gaon Connection and WHO’s joint campaign on alcohol abuse

The baby of his family, the apple of his mother’s eyes, Hemant enjoyed the good things in life. He wanted to be a singer like his older brother. His idols were Mohammad Rafi and Kishore Kumar. He liked expensive clothes and perfumes, travelling, and most of all being in the company of friends.  

“It was just beer in the beginning, with my friends. Then I began to try other kinds of liquor, imported and expensive ones. I drank steadily for nearly ten years,” said Hemant. 

He refused to believe that he could ever lose control and fall by the roadside or misbehave or do anything bad under the influence of drinks. “I never thought of myself as a drunkard. I do not know when alcohol got the better of me and I kept falling into that bottomless pit.”

He left his garage business unattended. Then others began to leave him.  His friends got tired of him asking them for money to buy alcohol; his brother told him he would not live with him anymore. 

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Hemant’s mother left too, but before she did, she called his wife’s parents and told them to take their daughter away. “She said she would be fine if their daughter divorced me because I was no good, and she feared I may harm my wife,” Hemant recalled. 

The transition from alcoholism to crime was a short step. “I began threatening people to extort money from them. I picked up fights. And I drank day and night. I could not function if I did not have a drink as soon as I woke up.

“I reached the point of no return. Drinking took a toll on my health. I had begun consuming the cheapest liquor I could find. I did not care about its quality,”  he said.

“He would break our daughter’s piggy pank and take out what money he could to buy his drink,” Shobha Giri, his wife said. “He never ate food, only drank.” 

Shobha lived in constant fear. Hemant always had a sword with him. He would sit at their doorstep and yell at passers by. His wife finally packed off their daughter to a safer environment with her parents. 

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“I yearned for a father like my other classmates had who would drop them at school, bring them gifts… we had financial problems too. But I wished I could stay with my parents and not with my grandmother,” Neelam Giri, Hemant’s daughter said.

The downward spiral

“My health began to fail me and I had to be admitted. My liver was swollen and the doctor said it was severely damaged. For a few days while I was under treatment I was fine. But, I fell off the wagon, and once again I was in hospital,” Hemant said. “I began to hallucinate, I imagined people were trying to kill me…”

It was at Parivartan, a de-addiction centre in Satara, Maharashtra, that Hemant learnt that his alcoholism was a disease caused by chemical imbalance in his body caused by alcohol. The counselling and treatment by the doctors there helped him, he said. But not enough to keep him off the bottle. He lay unconscious in the hospital while the doctors told his wife that there was little hope of Hemant recovering. 

“I remember regaining consciousness. My daughter was sitting close by. I was in withdrawal and in a fit of rage I picked her up and flung her across the room. It was God’s grace I was weak. Otherwise, my daughter would have fallen over the balcony,” said Hemant. 

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“When I woke up the second time around, a lady, another patient’s mother, asked me if I was human or a fiend. When I asked her what I had done, she told me I had repeatedly insulted my wife who had sold every jewellery she owned, every vessel in the house so that I could be treated…,” he narrated.

The turning point

Something gave and Hemant swore he would die but not drink again. “I did not want to be remembered as the drunkard father or husband. But, I began to take gutkha (chewing tobacco).”

On his daughter’s birthday, Hemant came home late and empty handed. But his wife comforted him saying it did not matter and told him his daughter had a gift for him. It was a string of gutkha sachets. “I was upset. ‘Why did she buy this,’ I asked my wife. Her reply shook me,” said Hemant. 

“You keep sending her late at night to the shop to buy gutkha for you. She is scared to go out in the dark to the shop; there are so many stray dogs out there she is terrified of. So she thought if she bought you enough and gave them to you, you would not send her out again,” his wife Shobha told him.  

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Picking up the pieces

That was it and Hemant said the little remnant of the devil that was still in him, gave up and left for good. “I promised my daughter then and there that I would never do any wrong again in my life.” 

Hemant began to rebuild his life. He began singing, doing bit parts in films and soon his friends began to rally around him again and helped him build a new house for himself and his family. 

“I know everyone else was waiting for me to go back to drinking, except my wife who had full confidence in me and my resolve.” Hemant stopped drinking in 1996. He has been sober for 25 years.

“Hemant’s is a meaningful and full rehabilitation,” said his psychiatrist Hamid Narendra Dabholkar of Parivartan de-addiction centre. “His is a positive story. He sought treatment, he had the support of his family and he found motivation within himself. De-addiction is not an event, it is a process,” Dabholkar said.