IT is sad to note how more and more wives in Zambia today have become die-hard alcoholics disregarding their marital status and the respect that goes with it.
Gone are the days when husbands were the ones staying late in drinking places  after work. Those were days when the wives stayed home taking care of the children and cooking meals.
Today’s wife, has turned into an alcoholic.
Actually, in 2014, it is alleged that the World Health Organisation, (WHO) cited Zambian women as the hardest drinkers in the world and that 41 per cent of them binge drink at some stage of their lives.
It is necessary to note that if there is an alcoholic in the family, it is a challenge and everyone suffers.
While marriage is supposed to be about two people sharing their lives with each other, alcoholism cuts one person off and creates an emotional black hole in the relationship.
While drunk, many women do a lot of dangerous things which are out of  their husbands’ control.
One husband confessed that his wife drinks every night, or every other night until she blacks out.
“When she drinks, she gets dangerous to herself and others. She falls down and ends up with bruises. She also physically attacks me from nowhere. If  I am trying to sleep, she will wake me up attacking me looking for the keys.”
“She is extremely verbally abusive and she has threatened to kill me many times. I believe that given time, she may do it,” he said.

He adds that “Our intimate life is nonexistent. She tries whenever she is drunk, but I am not at all interested in it. When she drinks, I can’t sleep. I think she will come in to kill me, or I will wake up to find the house on fire.”

“When she is sober, she is the sweetest person I have ever known. We have no social life anymore. I repeatedly turn down invitations to events and dinners because I am embarrassed about what she will do,” he said.
According to relationship experts, alcoholism impairs judgment, releases inhibition, and heightens emotions. An alcoholic woman is a poor marriage partner.
She is not likely to consider her husband’s needs, may spend money recklessly, may not communicate very well, and may not be very dependable.
In an intoxicated state, she may tell her in-laws some terrible things and may act erratically at family events, cheat on her husband, steal from the family funds, or completely isolate herself in her home.
These circumstances can weigh heavily on a marriage and such a marriage may not survive unless the couple seeks intervention and gets help.
Even the most patient spouses can have difficulty enduring an alcoholic spouse.
The children who live with an alcoholic mother in the home are affected because it means they must learn to fend for themselves.
“My wife drinks Vodka all the time, as soon as she gets home from work she goes to her room and starts and after a while she starts wanting to pick fights with me and when I ignore her, she starts on my girls. When she picks on them, I step in because she threatens to punch them and that I will not allow to happen.
“When I tell her that she needs to stop drinking, she gets mad and wants to start arguing and starts blaming me for things I had nothing to do with. When she is drunk if you tell her that you can’t understand her she gets really pissed  off and then again the fight is on.”
“I stopped drinking 5 years before my first daughter was born. My children are starting to say that they hate their mother and they don’t want her around them so things are so hard for me right now,” one  other man confessed.
It is sad that nowadays women can go out with girlfriends and drink in a way that was not possible 10 years ago and some of the effects are being seen in the home where violence is the order of the day.
These days, more and more women have taken up this habit and are turning to alcohol.
This has led to a growing number of men filing for divorce as a result of their wives’ excessive drinking.
In Zambia today, many women are frequenting social functions like kitchen parties, weddings and birthday parties just to drink alcohol with their friends.
Many of these women also drink on any other day and most of the times do not even return home until 4am, the following day.
Other women, drink from home and usually take large amounts of beer, most often in secret and their husbands only discover empty bottles of wine and other beer.
No doubt, increased alcohol consumption has been cited as a huge contributor of the high number of divorces in the country.
Research shows that a high level of alcohol consumption increases the risk of divorce. The couples who are at the greatest risk of divorce due to alcoholism are those in which the wife drinks heavily while the husband either refrains from drinking or drinks very little.
“Among couples where the wife’s alcohol consumption was high and the husband’s low, the divorce rate over 15 years was 27 per cent. When the drinking roles were reversed, the rate was 13 per cent. The divorce rate for couples where neither drank much was 6 per cent while the rate was only 2 per cent among non-drinking couples,” according to research.
As part of his recently completed doctoral degree, Dr Ask Torvik examined various social consequences of alcohol, including the risk of divorce.
Dr Torvik studied close to 20,000 couples as part of the project, which was funded under the Programme on Alcohol and Drug Research (RUSMIDDEL) at the Research Council of Norway.
With assistance from Statistics Norway, Dr Torvik followed the couples for nearly 15 years, allowing him to observe various issues such as divorce rates. In this period, close to 8 per cent of the couples in the study had divorced or become separated.
Only a small percentage of the men whose consumption was high had wives who also drank a lot. On the other hand, approximately one half of the women who drank heavily had a husband with high consumption.
“Earlier studies have established a correlation between high levels of alcohol consumption and divorce. But almost no one has looked into the interaction between spouses nor followed up on couples over time to see how these issues played out,” Dr Torvik points out.
Young Men’s Christian Association last year observed that some women in Zambia had resorted to heavy beer drinking because they were frustrated.
Ndola district YMCA acting general secretary Ngosa Malindi noted that some married women had taken to alcohol abuse because of problems in their homes.
“Women are taking too much alcohol because they are frustrated in their homes. An African woman by nature is responsible, but if you find women drinking carelessly, it’s because they are frustrated. These are frustrated women and when you go on the ground, you will surely find out that there are a lot of stories attached to these women that are drinking heavily,” she said.
“Although drinking is not a solution, I’m not in support of that, but you will find that it’s the women that are patronising bars, which is not good because it is taking away their family time.
Let our men help their wives. Most men have become irresponsible and that has placed women in a tight corner,” she added.
She further called on organisations that speak for women’s rights to also target men in their programmes.
“Most organisations are speaking on behalf of the women like YWCA, NGOCC and many more. They are targeting the women; let them target the men as well because that’s where the problem could be coming from. My thinking is that we should go back to our original roots, where we look at a woman as an asset contributing to national development,” Ms Malindi said.
“Not all women can have white-collar jobs but they also contribute to the well-being of a home and you find that the majority who drink every day are frustrated housewives who can afford to drink from Monday to Friday,” she said.
Whatever the circumstances, some relationship experts explain that more men are ending their marriages over women’s excessive drinking.
Husbands initially cite a different reason for divorce, such as that their wife does not work or help around the house.
It only later comes to light that the reason she is not doing so is because she is usually drunk or nursing a hangover.
Many men are usually embarrassed to discuss their wife’s behaviour, so these issues are only coming to light now.
Some of these wives become violent towards their husbands and children whenever they get drunk.
Marriage experts further explain that being married to an alcoholic is difficult for anyone to bear.
One expert actually said that alcoholism and marriage do not mix well, if anything, they do not mix at all.
Alcoholics, indeed all addicts, when active do not care for the emotions and needs of others. They trample on the feelings of those around them, and those closest get it the worst. Feeding their addiction is the priority.
“The truth is that the alcoholic loves alcohol more than their spouse. It is like the alcoholic is having an affair with the drink and does not care about their spouse,” the expert said.
At the end of the day, it is better to have a safe broken family than an unsafe family where lives could potentially be lost.
Comments: moongacharity10@gmail.com