Counsellors ill-trained to check rise of alcoholism

Ill-trained and uninspiring counsellors at de-addiction centres, including the most prominent de-addiction address Alcoholics Anonymous, can hardly help reverse the rising alchoholism in the country.
For starters, the decades' old 12 steps to recovery for alcoholics, floated by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) decades' ago, is not suitable in the Indian context -- more so for its overemphasis on divine healing.
"In multi-religious India of 2013, a treatment programme of the complex condition of alcoholism cannot rest solely on a divine element. Alcoholism is a human problem. It needs a human solution," sobriety campaigner and counsellor Vijay Simha told PTI.
Simha doesn't mention the word God in his treatment.

"I provide human solutions that are based on a rational understanding of alcoholism (and addiction to narcotics. My treatment model does not exclude non-believers who find the repeated reference to God perplexing," he said.
Simha says the 12 steps don't work as much in India as they do in the West because their practitioners are largely uninspiring and have a negative mindset. North India has a serious problem of alcoholic addiction led by Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.
"You will always hear stories of huge losses (or wins) in Diwali gambling from many AA members, who are given the impression that recovery from alcoholism is merely abstinence. It is not," says Simha.