If you've lived here long enough in a more rural area, surely you've come to know (and perhaps love) the local borracho (drunk). They can be found stumbling down the street on a Thursday at 10 a.m. with a bottle of Brugal blanco or perhaps some cleren if they are low on cash. Some are funny and harmless, others will launch a rock or bottle if provoked. Still others are less visible and relegate their heavy drinking to nearly every night they have some money around a domino table.
Of course alcoholics come from all classes, age groups, etc., but those are the ones I've been exposed to. Three things that I have observed have made me interested in better understanding more about alcoholism in the context of the DR. First, an article (one of countless with the same story) that talks about how a man drank himself to death over a period of several days right in front of his family. Apparently they didn't stop him.
Agricultor que ten?an d?as bebiendo ron, muere intoxicado en el Enriquillo : Cuatriboliao.Net
The second thing was that once while attending a burial, I noticed an fresh grave in the earth with a simple cross reading "Nacho" and an empty bottle of rum neatly sitting on top of the mound. When I asked around about the story of Nacho, I was told that he was an old drunk and that on his deathbed, his dying words were 'give me another shot of Brugal'. So his drinking buddies continue to comply by going to his grave and dumping a little.
Finally, in one small town a man left the bar drunk. His friends knew he shouldn't have been driving, but after he insisted they handed him the key to his moto. He crashed down the road on a sharp curve into a telephone pole and died. An elderly local woman claims that she was in that spot just half an hour earlier, and an 'evil black dwarf' appeared to her and said 'the next person that passes through this curve will die', and so some people attribute his death to that and NOT to the fact that he was drunk and driving.
So, what do Dominicans think about alcoholism? What does this have to do with the drinking culture? Is it viewed clinically as a disease? Is there any type of intervention approaches involved, do people take a lassiez-faire stance, or are they outright enablers? Has anybody, government or otherwise, done anything to deal with the prevalence of alcoholism in the DR?
So many social problems are caused by or inter-related with alcohol (poverty, gender based and family violence of all types, motor and vehicle accidents, etc.), yet it seems no one wants to point the finger at alcohol.
Of course alcoholics come from all classes, age groups, etc., but those are the ones I've been exposed to. Three things that I have observed have made me interested in better understanding more about alcoholism in the context of the DR. First, an article (one of countless with the same story) that talks about how a man drank himself to death over a period of several days right in front of his family. Apparently they didn't stop him.
Agricultor que ten?an d?as bebiendo ron, muere intoxicado en el Enriquillo : Cuatriboliao.Net
The second thing was that once while attending a burial, I noticed an fresh grave in the earth with a simple cross reading "Nacho" and an empty bottle of rum neatly sitting on top of the mound. When I asked around about the story of Nacho, I was told that he was an old drunk and that on his deathbed, his dying words were 'give me another shot of Brugal'. So his drinking buddies continue to comply by going to his grave and dumping a little.
Finally, in one small town a man left the bar drunk. His friends knew he shouldn't have been driving, but after he insisted they handed him the key to his moto. He crashed down the road on a sharp curve into a telephone pole and died. An elderly local woman claims that she was in that spot just half an hour earlier, and an 'evil black dwarf' appeared to her and said 'the next person that passes through this curve will die', and so some people attribute his death to that and NOT to the fact that he was drunk and driving.
So, what do Dominicans think about alcoholism? What does this have to do with the drinking culture? Is it viewed clinically as a disease? Is there any type of intervention approaches involved, do people take a lassiez-faire stance, or are they outright enablers? Has anybody, government or otherwise, done anything to deal with the prevalence of alcoholism in the DR?
So many social problems are caused by or inter-related with alcohol (poverty, gender based and family violence of all types, motor and vehicle accidents, etc.), yet it seems no one wants to point the finger at alcohol.