Moscow opens alcoholic clinic for children

[Guest Boo_Bradley]

Russia's child alcoholics get their own clinic

 

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow

Sunday October 26, 2003

The Observer

 

Andrei is 14, and one of the patients of Russia's first clinic for child alcoholics. Two others are aged eight.

'I wanted an unknown feeling,' said Andrei. 'For the last year I have been drinking regularly. I like both the drink itself and the feeling it gives me. All the problems that were wearing me out started slipping away.'

 

Now Andrei is getting help. Of the estimated 12,200 child alcoholics in Russia, 25 can be housed in this treatment centre on Leninskii Prospekt in Moscow. The Health Ministry plans to fund several more nationwide, hoping private donors will contribute.

 

Senior officials told The Observer that the number of children diagnosed with an alcohol, drug or substance abuse problem had more than trebled since 1993. Dr Yevgenia Koshkina, of the Narcology Research Centre of the Ministry of Health, said: 'In 10 years the number of eight-to-14-year-old children with an addiction problem has risen from 6,343 to 22,254. More than half of them are children with alcohol problems.'

 

Koshkina said in percentage terms this was no higher than that of Germany, Denmark or Britain, but that the figures did not include the estimated million homeless children in Russia. 'We can suppose the percentage of alcohol, substance and drug addicts among them is very high. This is of great concern.'

 

Koshkina blamed youth-targeted advertising for the trend. 'We managed to eliminate the most aggressive beer advertising campaign from television. But you can't eliminate beer drinking by young people in the same way. After 10 years of advertising, it had become the norm. You only have to look at children on the street, clutching bottles of beer.'

 

Television is filled with adverts preaching the virtues of beer, whose peak consumption time is 7am. Russians drink beer before work, when it takes the place of orange juice in the Western breakfast. Alcoholism has rocketed in recent years, the Health Ministry reporting in 2001 that the annual consumption of neat alcohol per person had risen on a year from 5.3 to 8.3 litres.

 

Before the new dyetskii sanitorium, alcoholic children were treated in adult facilities, often compounding the problem. The clinic for minors concentrates on psychological treatment.

 

Some 2.2 million Russians are registered as having alcohol problems, 400,000 of whom are considered 'pernicious' drinkers but not yet addicted. The crisis is linked to the poverty that grips Russia outside the economic boom zones of the main cities. A survey of 42,000 Russians this summer found 38 per cent had only enough money for clothes and food, 30 per cent for food alone, and 10 per cent said that they found it hard to feed themselves at all.

 

Poor quality of spirits is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year from alcohol poisoning. Many brands of vodka turn solid when placed in the freezer - a sign of impurities.

 

Statistics show Russian drink an average of 70 litres of vodka a year, yet this figure does not include moonshine and home brews.

 

Teenage alcoholism is also a law-and-order problem. This year Moscow's city council approved the introduction of a curfew for children under 14 years old. Between 10pm and 6am unaccompanied children would be arrested and their parents fined between $10 and $16. Owners of restaurants and bars who allow teenagers in after 10pm would be fined up to 10 times as much. But the moves are too late for Andrei. 'I have understood that I am an alcoholic,' he said. 'I'll try to stop, but it will be hard.'