The unspoken alcohol problem among UK Punjabis
He didn’t look to the Punjabi community for help, but eventually found Alcoholics Anonymous
“It would never have occurred to me to go to the community for help with drinking.
A new survey, commissioned by the BBC to investigate attitudes to alcohol among British Sikhs, found
that 27% of British Sikhs report having someone in their family with an alcohol problem.
“I felt quite desperate at times,” she says, “but the counselling really helped, I felt that I could carry on.”
“There is stigma associated with chronic alcohol misuse
and they don’t want their reputation to be tainted… if there is a dependent drinker in the family what might people think of our family?”
Sanjay, who has now been sober for 16 years, says he didn’t feel
that he could admit he had a weakness, nor that he was feeling lonely and self-medicating with alcohol.
Rav Sekhon, a British Punjabi psychotherapist who works with ethnic minority communities,
says: “There is really strong pride and honour for the family name.
Her husband’s family had visited her to assure her he had stopped drinking
and things would be different – so feeling the pressure from both his family and her own, she and her children returned home.
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