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Most of us at some point have dealt with the effects of alcohol abuse whether on a personal level or community level. I've never had an alcohol problem but I do smoke cigarettes. As much as us smokers tell ourselves that one is worst than the other, we know the truth! Deep down we do! I've thought about quitting, I've printed out the "Never take another puff" book and I've told myself that I will be better for it. Now to find the resolve to quit and diet at the same time!
However, I've been raised in an area, as well as a family where this alcohol crutch has been used from generation to generation like a curse that just won't break. Ofcourse for the worst of it as far as my family is concerned, I was too young to remember everything. That's not say that I don't have family members that still take a drink, I do. But from what I hear and the little that I actually do recall, like things flying across the room in arguments at parties, people being flung across the room in arguments at parties, drunk men crying, drunk women getting choked by drunk men.....from those memories to what I see now? There's been multitudes of improvement!
One thing that stayed with me though, was when I was walking home with my friend, baaaaaaaaack when I was a teenager, and these two guys, a lot older than we were, stopped me? To say that a zillion petrifying images were flashing before my eyes at that moment, would be an understatement. She walked on a little and waited while I silently prayed that the main actor who gripped me by the wrist with one hand while he held a bloody bushknife in the other, would let me go.
I'm sitting here typing this and I can feel my throat closing up because talking about this means talking about one of theeeee worst experiences I have ever had! Why I bring this up? Because he was either drunk or drugged, aside from having just come back from fighting someone with that bushknife. He looked pretty beat up and cruel. I don't know if he could feel me trembling and thought, "Ay shame, lemme let this shaking like a leaf punk ass go," but I do know that my guardian angel had to have been present that day.
All I could think about, I'm not gonna make it home today, he's gonna take me, rape me, and chop me but when my friend thought to call out to me as if she had heard one of my parents calling out for me, I mustered up the courage in my frozen state to tell him that "I am being called." It was a term we used when we were young and our parents called us inside. He eventually let me go and I walked home with her, trying to avoid falling from having my knees buckle the way that they wanted to. I made sure to purposely forget his name too because well? It wasn't cute to be traumatised like that. Unfortunately, he, like many others have fallen victim to this lifestyle until it kills them or they're killed because of poor choices as a result of not being in their right minds more than they were.
How I could have avoided that experience? Aside from not visiting our other friend that day, I don't have a clue. I dunno too, that had he been sober, whether he would have did what he did? I'm leaning towards no because I've passed many a sober person as a young woman and they didn't do a thing to me but continue walking. That's my problem with liquor on the whole. It steals your ability to think rationally and gives you some kinda foolish indication that you have just inherited superpowers.
I don't like the stuff, I get sinus as soon as I put any kinda alcohol to my lips so I don't drink the stuff and I don't enjoy being around people who are drunk on the stuff. I don't want people falling all over me, spilling the stuff on me and tapping me. That tapping!!! That tapping and smacking of the arm when they're talking to you but believe that you looking straight at them means that you're paying them no mind. No!
I will tolerate being around people who are having a social drink but I won't stay for very much longer should it turn from social drinking to acting stupid drinking because if I am going to leave my quiet retreat, then it has to be worth it or else Ima say bye-bye and go right back home!
As far as Mr. Ntuli. I hope that he is able to come back from the alcohol abuse and put his brilliant mind to work. It would be a shame if he wasn't able to.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!
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