How do you fight something difficult?

Another Round2020

Alcohol is a tough thing when an entire family has to deal with it. I've seen families dissolve like a bar of soap in water just because of a close relative's drinking. My neighbors make a scene in the street because they come home drunk. They call it a disease, but it doesn't come from the body, nor is it spread through the air. So how can drinking be a disease if nobody infected them?

When I was thirteen, there was a family next door. Every day, I could hear them arguing about the old man's drinking. He'd come home drunk, covered in urine, and a complete mess. Two other friends had carried him on their shoulders and left him like a sack of potatoes in front of the house. When I walked down that street on my way to school, I'd see him snoring, sprawled out in his garden like a wreck. And the worst part was, his eldest son was following in his father's footsteps.

One night we woke up to a commotion, but no one intervened. It was the wife; she was furious with the drunk who had peed and defecated in the living room like dog. We could hear shouts and the clanging of pans, and the drunk in the background muttering something in his thick tongue that we couldn't understand. We heard doors being slammed inside the house, blows, shoves, and insults, and we thought she'd killed him. That woman was a wild beast. Then we heard a bucket fall to the floor and the drunk complaining of the cold. Someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on him, and the woman threw him out into the street.

He slept with some friends in a garbage dump near the liquor store, and the whole place reeked of drunks and urine. My mom didn't like me walking by and seeing that sight; I had to cross the street to catch public transportation. There were three drunks sleeping together in a dump surrounded by stinking trash. My mom was right; that would stay with me for the rest of my life, and at 13, you're easily shocked.

My inner thoughts made me wonder, how did that man get into that situation? Who corrupted him? What circumstances led him there? He had a normal life; he wasn't just anyone. He had studied civil engineering, and even while still working, he started getting into drinking by accompanying friends to a bar for a few drinks—or "a few drinks," as they say, using the diminutive so it doesn't sound bad. And little by little, he started to like it, and at work, they fired him. He was dangerous; the buildings had to be properly constructed and straight. They didn't want a drunk reading blueprints and giving orders.

Then came the saddest part: he was a vagrant on the street, an uncontrollable drunk, and they didn't want him at home; they wouldn't open the door for him. He had even made his garden a makeshift toilet. One day he decided not to return, and a week passed before they found him dead. He had tried to cross a road, completely drunk, and a truck came along.

The family mourned him and buried him; they loved him, but he was their torment, their torture, their cross to bear. They grew weary of that burden and those nightly scandals. Now all that remained was the son who followed in his footsteps, and the mother now unleashed all her anger upon him. All those years of pain his father had inflicted upon her were now being borne by her son. The woman harbored a deep hatred for alcohol and liquor stores. She would say with such sorrow and bitterness that if she had the power, she would burn down all those liquor stores and imprison anyone who dared to drink.

All of this came to mind after watching a film similar to this one when. The Danish film is called Druk, from 2020. Martin, living a monotonous life and experiencing marital problems, one day stopped and began to look at everything around him and ask himself: What am I doing here? Martin, a 50-year-old history teacher, married and father of two, lives a dull and routine life. He feels drained; everything is repetitive, and he has lost his joy and zest for life.

In a restaurant, three men celebrate Nikolaj's 40th birthday. His colleagues and friends, teachers Martin, Peter, and Tommy, all work at a school in Copenhagen. But from that moment on, their boring lives begin to take shape, fueled by alcohol and the ever-present danger of falling into addiction. Driven by their desire for fun, they want to drink all day to test their alcohol tolerance. Through jokes, laughter, and drinks, they are each sealing their own fate.

In that state, they become more useful, as if with renewed energy in school classes and in their married lives, and they seek that new energy in each glass of alcohol, as an activator of something dormant inside that makes them feel and be different and more open, but the changes occur in these men who experiment with the forbidden, their health.

But now their experiment is taking them to higher levels of alcohol in their blood, and they have fun arriving drunk. Martin and Nikolaj have problems in their respective homes, and Martin has a heated argument where he discovers that he was betrayed by his wife; he leaves her.

The group of teachers tries to abandon the experiment; three manage to stop drinking during the day, but Tommy is losing himself in alcohol and dies at sea after going out drunk in his boat. They bury him, and the three survivors of that crazy experiment refuse to drink at a dinner party. Martin's wife calls him to try to save their marriage.

Tommy had to be rescued; he was the most emotionally and spiritually vulnerable, unable to escape that absurd experiment they decided to conduct. I would try to guide him to seek help at a government institution so they could help him cleanse himself and overcome that vice that destroys not only lives and families but also his own. I would make that effort for him, even though she my neighbor in the first story said they had tried everything and had even put him in an institution for alcoholics, but nothing had worked. 

I would look for to guide him without reproach or criticism, without contradicting him, and to put myself in his shoes and analyze at what point in his life he became emotionally stuck and depressed, and how to help him overcome that emotional stagnation. Although our neighbor told my mother at that time that her husband had no reason, only that the devil had possessed him. Alcohol is a trap; it shows you a change and happiness at first, and then, like the devil, it exacts a heavy price.

And to show Tommy, the one in the movie, that life is beautiful and that you can enjoy it despite your responsibilities. But I remember that my neighbor was once taken to the beach to see if the sea, the breeze, and the sun would cleanse him, and he didn't change. The movie tries to teach how to let go of control in life. My neighbor, back then, knew how to let go well, and he got lost.

I know that adult life reaches a point where responsibilities become suffocating and oppressive, but you also have to look for a solution, support, help, and Tommy had to be taken care of; in that state, they weren't even capable of handling a boat.

looking for try everything to stop him from drinking, hiding all his drinks and talking to him to make him see reason, and of course, seeking professional help. Although I remember our neighbor she talking to my mom and saying she had done everything to help him, but he always found a way to get alcohol with his friends. She put him in a rehabilitation center, and he escaped got out on his own. Tommy from the movie died at sea; my neighbor died on a highway.

Druk won an Oscar.