Alcoholism in Mongolia: A National Crisis
By Colin Gilbert
After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Mongolia was left on shaky ground. When the Russians left, the country’s economic infrastructure quickly deteriorated and countless Mongolians were left jobless. One commodity that did survive the collapse, though, was liquor. Cheap vodka and other alcoholic beverages were available at every corner, and the masses of people left in poverty turned to it in an effort to cope with their plight.
Sadly, not much has changed in Mongolia since it became an independent country. There is a shop selling cheap liquor on almost every corner, and the number of people addicted to alcohol is astronomical. The U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) reported in 2006 that 22 percent of men and 5 percent of women in Mongolia are alcoholics. The rate of alcohol dependency is three times higher than that of Europe. Furthermore, about one in five Mongolian men binge drink every week.
In Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, intoxicated individuals roam public spaces at all hours of the day. In a 2003 BBC story, journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reported seeing a considerable number people stagger around the city’s train station at 10 in the morning—Mongolia’s streets are littered with addicts.
A typical Mongolian police station contains several sobering-up cells, where drunks are collected and deposited on a nightly basis so they do not freeze to death or commit crimes in the streets. The intoxicated cell mates who are not passed out shiver under blankets—their clothes are removed so that they can’t commit suicide.
Not all of Mongolia’s many alcoholics are to be found on the streets, however. As a matter of fact, in most cases, the people locked up overnight in the sobering-up cells are men who have been accused of domestic violence. Officers at the police stations regularly see the same people brought in for belligerence after binge drinking.
One reason for the ubiquity of alcohol in Mongolia is that the government is invested in it. A 2009 NPR article reports that alcohol-related taxes generate more government money than anything else, accounting for 20 to 23 percent of the government’s income. To maintain such high profits, alcohol is marketed as a symbol of national pride and cultural heritage. Heroic figures like Genghis Khan are associated with drunken celebration, and many consider heavy drinking to be an admirable sign of masculinity.
At the present time, there are insufficient recovery options for alcoholics in Mongolia. People seeking help are lucky if they can get into the country’s one government-run rehab facility, which has a mere 50 beds. Even the patients who make it into the center stay for only ten days, where they receive some medicine and counseling, and are then released back into the same harsh socioeconomic climate.
Clearly, more help is needed for Mongolia’s disproportionate alcoholic population, but unless the country can manage to improve its economic status and cultural priorities, a solution to the problem could still be far off.
Tags: Alcoholism, cultural influences
