 Good morning and welcome back to I-254 in the morning. My name is Faith Mnsoli. In just in case you joining us, it's WCW. On this segment, we celebrate the strength of a woman. Now, I'm sure you've come across these three types of people. The one who drinks on a weekend only, and the one who drinks on a weekend only, sorry. The one who drinks at events only, and the one who drinks from Monday to Monday to an extent that he or she cannot go to work without being drunk. And they even reach a point where they decide to quit work and major into drinking as a career. These people need our help and not ridicule. And today in studio, we are speaking to Brenda Ocheng. She is a reformed alcoholic and an addiction coach. Karibusana. Karibusana. So alcoholism is a topic that is so close to my heart because I have relatives and friends who have been or rather who are alcoholics and you find that Leo Adamuka will even go to a pulpit and he or she is like I'm saved and I'm no longer going back there. And then after some two or three days, he goes back there and you're like, gosh, is this still the same person when Yalikuwa Kani Sani is saying how he or she is saved blah blah. So it is just so courageous to come out of it and say like I'm not going back there. But that is as before we reached there. Let us know who is Brenda Ocheng and how is life growing up? Brenda Ocheng is a recovering alcoholic, grateful recovering alcoholic, currently working as a recovery coach and I'm also an artist and I like to do my work artistically. So how was life growing up? Life growing up I must say was one that anybody would envy. I have the greatest parents who gave us everything that we needed to grow up. We grew up in a good neighborhood, Kilelesha went to good schools like St. George's, Kenahai. My dad would drive us to school all the way and he was working in KIA in Kabat and he would pick us up for lunch and then take us back and then pick us up. My parents did everything they could and they brought us up with the fear of God also. So I would say that I had a very good childhood and even my teenage was good. I had everything that I needed. So what did you study in Kampas? I've studied so many things, I sometimes forget some of them. I started off as a banker and then I got bored and then I went on to admin because I had languages and I imagine I'm going to land this weird and wonderful job in UN and make lots of money and travel. I like travelling. And then I decided that's not what I wanted to sit behind a desk and be somebody secretary because that's how many times it ends up when you do admin. And then I ventured into Shobis and I started off as an actor, an actress. I went to Nairobi Theatre Academy and learned how to act, how to dance, how to do voice overs and all of this kind of thing. And eventually I made my way into the world of fashion which I have always found very glamorous. As a child I always looked at the magazines, Surazuri or Smoyna fashion awards, all these weird wonderful things. And one day I actually found myself there. Those are some of the best days of my life, I will still say so but that is also where I met Vodka. Okay now this girl who was brought up in church how did you now meet the Vodka? The Vodka was there. It was just there. I could be doing a show like now and over there there's vodka and people would be drinking it. I guess they could do that without impunity but for me once I started apparently I'm of the kind of people who will eventually go... I'm not even going to say overbod because my problem is not even that I will drink and then get drunk at work and not be able to drink again. My problem is that I will not get drunk. Yeah so if I would get drunk then people would tell me you have a problem. My thing is me I will drink, I will not get drunk and so I'll think I'm okay. And then even when well meaning people would say why are you drinking vodka? Now you know when you go out and things like that I still would love the vodka. Dawas you know the ones in carnival. People would say why drinking vodka? You are a lady, you know ladies drink wine and sherry and things and I'd wonder why are you criticizing meaning you people are rowdy, you are abusing waiters, you're falling, I'm the one who is going to drive you... I'm not drunk but I didn't realize that if I can drink that much and not get drunk then I have a problem. Yeah because I'm thinking of like how high was high for you. Do you know I don't remember ever being in a situation where people say hey you messed last night Tiju you are dancing on the tables and things like that. I wanna somehow made it home and drink some more and then I just black out. I'm that kind of person who actually becomes more quiet the more I drink because I didn't know this but it was acting for me as medication. I didn't know this but already I had depression setting in within me. And so this thing was actually helping me to cope when I'm down bring me up when I'm too high power or starting to feel I don't like my life forever it acts as sedative and brings me down but the thing about alcohol is that when it is done with you you'll actually be more depressed and more anxious. And so you said that you once tested alcohol when you're in Mombasa and you didn't like it so you tested it and you tested lemon when did it become lemonade? It became lemonade when I associated it with glamour because me I like things like shine, like glow these ones I just like things that shine so when I was in Shobes and I'm associating psychologically without realizing it I'm associating vodka with all the glamour that I'm seeing around then it started to not taste bad in any case I used to mix it with sweet things two things it was doing for me I wouldn't feel the negative effects that I would feel and the initial kind of high that it gives you that happy feeling well this is how I like to be this is how my personality generally is that I'm a happy person but by then that I was going down into other things so vodka was helping me to be me so we say we call it instrumental instrumental stage where this thing no longer just something on the side that you're here to dance you're here to associate but now this thing is just a by the way it actually became the thing that helps me even do this otherwise I'd be too depressed I don't want to go to that function I don't want to meet people I just want to sit in the house by myself and you say that the alcohol you realize that you are depressed so what was depressing you that the alcohol was taking away I think it was just my life first of all I will say this so that I'm not pointing fingers at anybody I will say that some people and I think I'm one of those people who might have just the predisposition to be depressed maybe I don't know brain chemicals cortisol or something is too much and other chemicals feel good chemicals are less and yet my personality is that I like to be happy so it wasn't I wouldn't even have called it depression in our day we never used to say such things use words like depression but I think that innately I was feeling like I'm not living my purpose I'm not happy really with my life I wanted other things for myself by the time this was happening I was in my late 20s early 30s me according to me I was supposed to have gotten married at 23 had finished having my kids by 27 in any case I was supposed to before that have flown all over the world and maybe being a broadcaster I really wanted to be I had a cousin who was a broadcaster and I really used to admire what she did of course she had an amazing voice so the things which I had wanted for myself somehow would elude me and I never used to know why so every so often it came back to bite me so and so has gotten that so how come this one has gotten that and then I would feel down so are you trying to say for one to become an addict alcoholic or a drug addict are you trying to say that there is always something that is eating him or her and it is not aware absolutely and that something could be emotional or mental like you have something as simple as depression anxiety or something even more serious like schizophrenia is starting to come in or bipolar or something like that when you are taking that drink you are not taking that drink so that you can become an alcoholic you are taking that drink just to feel normal you are actually self-medicating but there is always an underlying reason and to go back to your initial question why that person who is praying in church is going to go back to alcohol the same day is because the underlying reason has not been dealt with so where did you reach and do you realize that no this is too much for me and I have to seek help it reached for me when I discovered I had TB first of all that was so shocking to me because as far as I am concerned TB was always something out there because there is always this superstition not superstition it's superstitious in a way that TB is always associated with people with HIV exactly and also people living in sanitary conditions so it's shocking to realize I have TB shocking to realize it was going to cost so much to treat and at that particular time I had just done a bad deal and people had gone away with the money and so I was in panic and then I'm being told also you have to stop drinking in order to take the medication because I was then referred to Rhodes Clinic and then to discover after two days of trying to stop drinking and feeling like I don't know my spirit is going out of me then I can't I can't not drink it's killing me and yet I can't do without it and at that particular time call it divine intervention I saw somebody on TV talking about his drinking and it was kind of they said the patterns were the same as mine and I realized at that moment I've lost control I didn't want to call myself an alcoholic because still to me an alcoholic somebody who sleeps in the ditch I have never slept in any ditch so you see but you're better me I'm better so I still couldn't call myself an alcoholic I've lost control and I need help so I reached out to him I must say that during all the time that I was in quarantine back then I couldn't leave the house because the TV was really bad I still drank I just stopped drinking vodka but there was wine available in that house the people who were drinking that wine were very controlled drinkers but they didn't realize that first of all I had TV and I shouldn't drink and second of all I just shouldn't drink I was an alcoholic so I used to drink it I drank wine and I took TV medication so now I was asking for I don't know to go crazy and it was slowly starting to happen I tell you slowly slowly I was losing my mind I actually called up here in my 7 years of madness and so you went to rehab and so eventually it was a journey I tell you in my day people didn't believe in rehab I didn't even know rehabs existed but when I went to a certain place my doctor my physician because I thought maybe my liver is going she told me you need counselling so she referred me to a counsellor and the counsellor told me about her rehab so finally after a long journey of course I didn't have money nobody I knew would have paid for me because everybody says see this one you just brought for yourself you just stopped drinking that's it but the drink had taken me so a random German I'll call him random for now a random German is the one who saw the situation and gave me the money to go to rehab he's not random anymore because he got married to my sister so I went to rehab in Asunbi and it was the best program I have ever seen you see now because of all those things I was saying in the beginning feeling like I don't belong here I can't get what I want I've done so many things so many different courses in my life which were amazing for work I remember I did Frank and Kofi and my business went short went really good I did many other things but this program was especially good for me because it was dealing with my underlying issues from way back whereas I had that almost perfect childhood there's so many things around you that happened and unfortunately I was a very intelligent child I would take it in people think this is a child she doesn't know what's happening but I would take it in and I would try to process this and it would cause me let me just say it's what was later causing me a lot of neurosis so to go back this program helped me to go back to the foundation because if you looked at me at that particular time and said what is causing this lady to drink she lived in a beautiful apartment she loves her she has a good family she gets jobs like this I walk out of this one tomorrow I go to the other one I may have learnt skills mostly so I'll just jump from what is her problem but my problem was not necessarily in the there and in the now and then the problem was stemming from other things that eat me up from within at the time I blamed so many people as to why I couldn't reach my goals why I couldn't live my dream but I came to realise later that but what was this goal and dream yet you had a good job and you had well this good job is a secretarial or an administrative me I want to go to New York me I want to be a broadcaster me I want to be like faith me I want to travel the world yes me I want to be a specific kind of person I don't know that he really exists because I haven't found him I've come to the conclusion he doesn't exist but my mind was just I think we used to read news and wounds until he just happens so you were just building castles that one and you get very frustrated of course and other people even younger people just look they don't want to know this world and then they go their way and then you end up ending them again so you went to rehab you relaxed so what happened when I was in rehab we did the 12 steps of alcoholics and animas in step 4 is where you really go deep inside to find those underlying things there's a reason why those things you have pushed them into your unconscious they're very frightening they're very shameful, they're very painful and they just bring up emotions that you don't want that is why your mind has pushed it into the unconscious now being asked to bring it to the surface again because that's the only way my counselors are going to be able to help me they wouldn't know what is in my past so I didn't do it I just pretended to do it I just flossed over the top in alcoholism you become very dishonest so I didn't do it so these things once I got out of rehab they came back to bite me they haven't gone anywhere just because I've gone to rehab doesn't mean that magic now everything is gone the world is going to be good to me infact if anything people have just opened more bars those people I've hurt are still out there hurting, waiting for me and I didn't have the skills to cope with it so is it at that point when you attempted suicide or was it before that was before I attempted suicide when I was still in the depths of drinking despair, I hadn't gone to rehab I had a very good job in embassy but I was depressed the thing is I was clinically depressed when I needed medication and my friends from my place of worship they even helped me push me along to a psychiatrist who used to give me medication but the thing is to take that medication I could not drink so I prefer to put the medication aside and to drink was everything so my depression was not being treated and so I was just getting more and more depressed and my depression showed me you're worthless you're a waste of skin there's no reason why on this planet you just need to go, you failed anyway so I tried to commit suicide and I failed at that also because I'm still here so I failed to commit suicide much later 11 years later I met one of the people I was living with because I was living in a hostel and I know that I had escorted these people out and I was alone in this hostel that was the idea that I take all these antihistamines plus vodka and then I go to MP Shah and die there, not here and these people who I had escorted and had gone in Amatatu for whatever reason came back and they found me on the ground now 11 years later is when this lady even told me I was convulsing it's really scary to know all of that but to cut a long story short the next day I was at work that was also a rock bottom I'm at work and I'm supposed to be dead maybe God is telling me something maybe I'm not supposed to so why are you this type of a person who was you had to drink to go to work I had to drink I was a DDO, daily drinking officer with a PhD permanent head damage I had to drink even if you called me and said can we meet up and I don't know go for a walk or something of that my answer is no but if I really have to come then I have to have something in my system I absolutely had to drink I would take morning shots that's why I lost my job at the embassy they couldn't stand alcohol it's melted my bread everything about you is so perfect you're a nice person, you're a good worker I'm sorry, I'm sorry the next day I won't drink in the morning but believe me I will drink in the evening or I'll just look for something else which will serve as alcohol which won't smell as much now you start to drink bananas, garlic, daily and then there is some way you mentioned that you went late for a fashion show and again you were drunk so I'm wondering how would you walk into a fashion show drunk you want to cut walk in stilettos but you're still drunk the thing is I couldn't do nothing without alcohol so in a normal circumstance that alcohol question would be on set so it would be so easy to slip it in or whatever talk nicely to a waiter but now this particular show was all the way in safari park so I took my shots no I was living in state house time I got there you know it was the giggling I was giggling and I was of course unsteady and I was giving my dress a hard time so she had to tell the designer this person is not fit to walk I was actually sent home not even sits aside go just you're an embarrassment go away so for your parents how was it for them when you were battling alcoholism and now that you started right in that age mercifully they never knew about it I wasn't living with them at the time my sister my big sister who I lived in really protected me by not telling them or not telling them everything about it but mothers have six senses and my mum always knew some things up and the fact that I would refuse refused to come home and things so actually it wasn't even when I went to rehab my parents didn't know I had gone to rehab so this is going to kill my parents if they knew that me of all people I had become an alcoholic and I'm just a mess out there so that was our secret and then much much later when I think I had hit my now the mother of all relapses after rehab after the second rehab I still drank it hit a really big relapse and I lost everything and I had to move back home so after I moved back home and then my mum was sitting there one night she welcomed me with open arms I was over 40 and I'm moving back home so you can imagine they're welcoming you with open arms but at the same time there's so many questions why are you somebody who is supposed to be so far in life so one day sitting by the fire gently she wanted to know really what is going on and in her mind there are so many things that she had created so I just told her the whole story and what amazed me is that she was relieved that it was just alcohol she had thought of so many other things I'm like wow and she said look that's something you take to God you are a prayerful person give this thing to God and stay with us here and everything will be okay and interestingly enough even in rehab they will tell you that you will never beat this thing without the help of a higher power a power greater than you it may be the God of the Bible or it may be the program but in any case it's not me and I think I'm their God we are so conceited and everything so I woke up one day I looked around me in my parents house and I said I'm in rehab for the third time now my parents house is in rehab because definitely I was going to be controlled very much being a grown up and then living in that kind of setup and I told myself how am I going to make it this time I've been to rehab twice and still drag and despite the fact that I had the determination I took myself to rehab so I remember that my mum told me that I need to take it to God ask him to help me and I need to do finally do what I was told in rehab because you'll tell me what to do but I'll always try to do it my own way and do it the way I've been told to do every single day without fail for 90 days whatever else my agenda is to be in a support group meeting so I did that and one day I looked around and I had made 92 days and I couldn't believe it I could not believe those time I couldn't make a week and I had made 92 days and from there I just followed that same principle to the support group to all these read the alcoholics anonymous group to have a sponsor to help other people now that's where it's very important for me to take myself out of myself I help other people and a day at a time I've done that until last year I celebrated 12 years of sobriety That's so nice so you're trying to say that alongside the rehabilitation you also had to bring in the God aspect like you had to be prayerful and just follow the rules that you had been taught at the rehab exactly and the good thing is that the program says God as you understand God so I didn't have to leave my God to to do another God and really to discover I was you know I have always been religious but I came to understand spirituality and there's a very big difference and spirituality transcends religion and I learned to meditate you know I read, me I read the Bible I read the Bible but also to meditate and to listen because that's when you listen to what God is telling me and that way I formed a closer bond with my God and I could practice my religion better and that's even another impetus why I'm not going to drink because I'm telling myself now you're an example now people are looking at you now I actually want to help another person because in addiction you're so self centered it's just me me me me me and my drink but now if I really I mean sobriety and I really want to help another person and then I do it the way that my religion has taught me to do it just fortifies and reinforces everything but to try and do it on your own me as Brenda or another alcoholic on their own that's where you just keep sleeping back sleeping back and you get so frustrated you don't understand it this morning I vowed I wouldn't drink but here I am three days later I don't even know where I am so for this young boy Riyangal who is getting into alcoholism and for him it's like I'm getting addicted day by day what can he or she do somebody who thinks they get please reach out for help if you think you're slipping into addiction the day when you're supposed to get help is today I don't know if I'm allowed to give my number yes you will I will eventually please look for that help today if you are a young person one thing I'd like you to know is that your brain develops doesn't develop fully until you're 25 years old so if you keep on drinking and drugging you're just retarding your brain so stop now that's not the way to go it's not cool if your friends are telling you smoking bangi is going to help you pass exams it might but eventually it will retard you will end up with schizophrenia or another mental disorder in any case your brain will be gone so stop now where can people find you are you on social media I am on social media I'm also associated with a very nice rehab called new health and when I'm not doing I do my recovery coach things then usually I'm in the field I'm actually talking to that addict or helping them in some other way but the ones that need rehabilitation I take them to a place in Ketisuru called new health so you can find me there as well and they're very nice counsellors there what are your social media handouts my name is Atyeno Tatien nothing brand new Atyeno Tatien Tatien Terraces yes you can find me there Tatien zero seven zero seven two two six four six eight seven three that's zero seven two two six four six eight seven three if you call that number I would be able to help you like I say I move around a lot so I'm more likely to go where the addict is you have a very beautiful story thank you very much I know that there is a boy a young man a young girl out there who has been inspired by this story this morning you've touched so many hearts and thank you for coming out because not so many people would want to come out especially women would want to come out and say I've been an alcoholic before and now I'm reformed thank you for giving me the opportunity you're welcome wow what a beautiful story from Brenda Ocheng and this morning as you start your day I know that you have come across this that whenever you go online for example on Instagram and all you like looking on Instagram is Deco it reaches a time eventually when the online logarithm realizes that faith likes looking at Deco and so whenever you log onto your phone that is what keeps popping up what am I saying that that is the same way our brains are designed that whatever you keep thinking of that is what keeps thinking that is what keeps popping on your mind all the time you keep thinking of positivity that what pops on your mind you keep thinking of negative things that is what keeps popping on your mind food for thought thank you for watching on behalf of Kaisu it's goodbye for now Val is up next with Bounds Nation