A Canadian woman who fought alcoholism comes to the city to help female alcoholics give up the habit
Help comes to women alcoholics all the way from Canada.

Joanne, who is 59 years of age has been 'clean' for the last 25 years, and is in the city to encourage women alcoholics to join Alcoholics Anonymous.

Alcoholism is as big a problem for women as it is for men, but fewer women sign up for the sessions. Out of the 3,000 AA members, only 40 members are women.

Her story

Joanne told this reporter her story. "I started drinking as a teenager. It was fun while hiding it from our parents.
But every time I drank, the next day I felt I should have had more," she said.

"I felt it was not worth drinking, if I was not drunk enough," she said.

In fact, Joanne continued to drink after marriage. Her marriage eventually broke upu00a0 and she was about to lose the custody of her daughter.

"I finally accepted that I had a problem only after I realised my father too was an alcoholic. He called up one night and promised to meet us the next day. He was drunk then. The next day he did not remember it. That's when I decided to give up alcohol," Joanna said.

Joanne then joined the AA in Canada. "Here no one degraded me. I could identify myself with the rest. I knew I was not alone," she said.

Help from sponsor

Joanne also had a 'sponsor' who helped her.

"A sponsor is a person who has already given up alcohol and has been successful in abstaining. I could speak to her whenever there was a problem and she stood by me," she said,u00a0"Here in AA we do not ask people to give up drinking. We say don't drink today. We take one day at a time," she added.

Chairman of AA, Leonard M Blumenthal is also touring India.

Leonard had worked with a rehabilitation centre before joining AA. He feels that AA is much better than a rehab since "here you find people you can identify with, and they stand by you."

He says that greater awareness should be created about alcoholism. "Every year 35 million people die because of alcoholism worldwide, and 370,000 people die of drug abuse the world over. The awareness about the dangers of alcoholism is much lesser," he said.

Contact
AA meetings are held in various places throughout the city. To contact AA call 98455 87507.
Visit https://www.aabangalore.com/ or https://www.aa.org/