Middle Class Alcoholism Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

After a heart attack my life as seaman was over, so I went back to school
and trained to become a shrink helping people with addiction problems
and for this I got a diploma. My first job was in Norway, at a private clinic,
helping businessmen to confront their problem, it was an expensive place
and not for common drunks you see in the street. I was fully disappointed,
these people successful in their line of work could not see what havoc they
caused for their families by regularly coming home late, drunk and abusive.
Thinking they could throw money at the problem by supplying money and
toys to wife and children, didn´t they have a nice home, cars and shopping
all what a middle class family could want. Yes right, but the wife didn´t have
a husband and the children didn´t have a father who went to work in suit
and tie where they sat in an office, waited for lunch time and the first drink
to take the shakes and depression off their shoulders. They were in full denial
and could not understand why their family or bosses had sent them here,
so they treated the place as a holiday retreat so they could sober up and talk
business. Meanwhile alcoholics that needed help walked the street never got
it and often died freezing to death in cold winters. Sometimes I see one of them
interviewed by fawning newspapers, but I know their private life is a misery,
a wife on valium and children on drugs living in a posh house of horror, but
still they live a life of denial. I turned my back on them I have better things to
do with my time.