Hundreds of alcoholics approach Dr. Kiran B. Nair for help every year. He has seen their worst sides. He knows how helpless they can get — which is why he insists, compassion, support and medical care, and not aversion and punishment, must guide society’s behaviour towards them. By Shali Ittaman ALCOHOL , like narcotic drugs, can wreck a person. Once addicted to it, he begins to lose his self-worth and his moorings; he becomes defeatist, ready even to throw himself off the edge — sometimes literally so! Dr Kiran , who receives many such people at the Vaidya Health CareAyurveda Hospital in Kochi, Kerala, has heard their stories first hand. He confirms, many of them are depressive, and some, even suicidal. Of late, however, stories in the media on drug addiction have overtaken the stories on alcoholism, mostly on the perception that alcoholism affects only the poor. It is a false impression. In fact, most of the patients at the Vaidya hospital are upwardly mobile, holding some s...