Hit by 'sense of worthlessness' after husbands retire and children move out, well-to-do women in city increasingly in need of rehab after taking to bottle to fill vacuum in life

Elderly women open bottled-up feelings

Hit by 'sense of worthlessness' after husbands retire and children move out, well-to-do women in city increasingly in need of rehab after taking to bottle to fill vacuum in life

YOU'D expect them to frown upon the wild things that their children do. Happy Mother's Day and all that, but times have tragically changed.

Illustration/Sameer Pawar

Caught in a social twister a bit late in life, 62-year-old Surekha Rao and 64-year-old Anita Bhise (both names changed) are taking baby steps out of alcoholism at the Muktangan De-addiction Centre (MDC) in Vishrantwadi.

Signs of alcoholism
Their baffled husbands had got them admitted last month after detecting telltale signs -- a stubborn urge to drink through the day, furtive swigs from the bottle, tantrums. It all apparently started from social drinking at their husbands' parties.

Rao and Bhiseu00a0-- from respectable neighbourhoods of Nigdi and Warje respectively, with husbands who retired from lucrative jobsu00a0-- are among a very small but worryingly growing group of aged, upper-middle-class women in the city and its urban neighbourhood who are getting hooked to alcohol. Incidentally, their children are settled in the US and Australia.

Lonely in city
Social scientists fear that they represent the city's changing humanscape: a lonely, desolate place for affluent seniors, especially for those whose children have left the country for better paying jobs, leaving their parents without a social cushion.

"Women who are dependent throughout their life on their husbands suddenly realise the worthlessness of their lives," said Dr Ujjwala Nene, psychiatrist, KEM Hospital. "This vacuum is so big that their frustration and disputes with husbands come to the fore. To forget this stark reality, they opt for alcohol."

It reflected today's changing upper middle class lifestyle, she said.
While Rao and Bhise regain control over their lives in the six-week programme, Pradumna Mohite, coordinator of the Nandadeep Women's Ward of MDC, said: "It was shocking and a new experience for us to tackle these two women. They are recovering, responding to treatment."

Dr Swati Shirwadkar, head of the sociology department, University of Pune, said isolation in the family was a strong cause for such behaviour.
"This is usually seen in split families, but children being away from home causes intense loneliness," said Shirwadkar.

Dr Kalyan Gangwal, founder president, Sarva Jeev Mangal Pratishthan, an NGO working for de-addiction in society, said this trend of alcohol addiction in the upper middle class was growing in the city.
"It starts from cocktail parties with wine or beer, and finally people become regular drinkers. These women had never touched alcohol before, but are getting exposed to it lately," he said.