On a binge

Boot camp for alcoholics

It's only 8:30 a.m., but the 32 women in pavilion No. 8 at Bohnice's addiction treatment center have already been up for two hours. Their days are strictly regimented, with almost no free time.

Half are dealing with alcoholism. Other women are battling drug addiction. The treatment for both groups is the same: When they aren't taking part in group therapy, they're making pottery, painting or riding horses.

Stays at Bohnice range from 11 weeks for a basic treatment program to three months for more serious cases. Czech health insurance covers treatments, the most basic of which costs 1,000 Kč ($44.74) a day.

Many of the younger patients (the youngest is 16) are dealing with drug addiction, whereas older patients tend to be alcoholics.

One recent morning, 11 patients gather in a circle. Some tell their stories.

A petite 30-year-old with dyed red hair talks for more than an hour about the roots of her alcoholism. She started drinking in high school, and by the time she went to university and got a job at a bar, drinking became an essential part of her life. In her lowest moments, she spent the day lounging on the couch at home, drinking vodka. She says her drinking probably has something to do with her very strict upbringing and her parents' high expectations of her.

Another woman, slightly older, blames her drinking on her lack of confidence. "It's always this fear that drives me to it," she says. "Sometimes I blame the experts who are supposed to help me but can't."

Plocová goes around the room asking the women who the most important people in their lives are. Most answer "my children" or "my family."

One woman, in her 50s, shakes her head in disagreement.

"I've realized here that I'm the most important person in my life," she says. "If I can't like myself, then I can't properly care for others, either."

Society of tolerance

More than anything else, doctors say the rise in severely alcoholic women has to do with the social changes ushered in with the Velvet Revolution.

"The shift in the '90s brought so many new responsibilities, and some people found it difficult to cope," Dvořák says. "Under the communist regime, you could always find a way to blame personal failure on the system. That's no longer possible."

Many women who turn to alcohol are professionals: economists, lawyers, managers. The gap between their expectations and their actual situation has driven them to drinking, says Podlaha of Na Bulovce.

"Dealing with the discrepancy between your dreams and your reality can be very difficult," he says.

The 1990s didn't suddenly cause female alcoholics to materialize out of nowhere. The roots of the problem were already in place, doctors say. "Czech society has always been very tolerant toward alcohol," says Dvořák.

Indeed, until recently, Czechs were the No. 1 beer drinkers in the world in terms of liters consumed per person. They have since slipped down to No. 2, behind Belgium, but a laissez faire attitude to drinking remains. "In this country, if you abstain, you will be the odd one out," Dvořák says. "Other people will just think you're weird."

— Petr Kašpar contributed to this report.

Other articles in News (4/10/2006):

• Roma eye political roles
• First test for Topolánek's shaky Cabinet
• ODS: ČSSD bugged phones
• Police with StB pasts to be vetted
• Seven Days
• Poles ban bad-boy Czech sculptor

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[21:41 05/01/2008] : There is something called AA, you might want to know. Alena Prague

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