BEIJING, June 27 -- For many foreigners, coming to China is a life-changing experience for the better.

For others, however, it can lead to a descent into a life-threatening addiction.

From just a handful of members at its inception in the early 1990s, Beijing's branch of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) now has about 80 expatriates from all walks of life who regularly attend meetings.

John, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is one of them.

After moving to Beijing in the early 1990s, his girlfriend at the time persuaded him to seek help by going to an AA meeting because of his constant bouts of heavy drinking.

It helped him to confront the fact he was an alcoholic, and he has been attending meetings ever since. He last suffered a drinking relapse nearly two years ago.

"I've been an alcoholic for as long as I can remember, but my recovery has been here in Beijing," John said.

Alcoholic expats can be broadly categorized into two groups those who came to China in the hope of leaving their alcohol dependency behind and those whose alcohol problems at home became magnified here.

"For some people who move here, the chances of becoming an an alcoholic are higher," John said. "Liquor is cheap and is freely available. You're far away from your home office, and there are a number of bars on every street corner.

"Struggling with cultural differences the language and problems people may encounter with basic services, even dealing with something as trivial as taxis can be a trigger.

"And there's another group here, as well, who try to escape their problem and start afresh. But there's a common phrase: 'No matter where you go, there you are.'

"There's no escaping problems that you may try to leave behind."

Before he sought help, John said he would go on benders during which he would down a bottle of vodka a day.

After his body could take no more, he would make a vow to himself to give up the booze.

"But an alcoholic has a tendency to rationalize the next bout of drinking," he said. "Things could be going really well, you could have months of sobriety, where you are really enjoying life and work is going well.

"So, then you may think: 'Let's party. Let's have a celebration' and start drinking again.

"I think the opportunity of being overseas, far away from home and the cheap alcohol were factors that probably accelerated my entry into the AA programme. Being an expat here led me to hitting the bottom faster.

"You do find guys like me, who have hit the bottom here and then become sober here.

"Probably most of the current membership have achieved sobriety while here.

"But then there are others who have been sober two, three or four years and then have a relapse when they come here.

"People here really run the whole gamut."

Changing perceptions

As one of the longest-serving members of the Beijing branch, John was asked in 2000 to help support the setting up of meetings for Chinese, a radical move at the time.

Li Bing, director of the substance abuse department at Peking University's Institute of Mental Health, led the project, which was something of a milestone in China - the first AA support network on the Chinese mainland specifically for Chinese.

"At that time I didn't know alcohol dependency existed no one did, really in China," Li said.

"Before, alcoholic patients would come to my hospital for detox (detoxification), then be released, then eventually be readmitted again.

"I didn't realize at that time it was a disease. I thought it was maybe a moral problem or a personality disorder."

Her views changed when an American doctor visited the hospital and suggested that a member of the staff attend an AA convention in the United States.

It was attended by about 60,000 recovering alcoholics and Li.

"It made me believe there was a way to solve the problem," she said.

But she had to overcome several hurdles. The AA, according to Li, was perceived in China as a "religious" group, a "strange, foreign organization."

With support from her own director, however, she managed to initiate the first AA meeting for Chinese at the hospital in October 2000.

Despite having to overcome initial scepticism from the group at what benefits it would bring, Li now proudly reveals that five of the people who attended that first meeting have remained sober to this day.

John and other members of the expat group gave advice to Li and patients during its early stages.

Regular meetings now take place at the hospital, as well as at Anding Hospital and a site in Dongzhong Jie, where the English language meetings are held for expats.

Since the first meeting, Li has gone on to launch alcohol treatment and education programmes, both for alcoholics and their family members, and initiated alcohol awareness campaigns.

"I think that the problem in China is that most people do not think alcohol can cause any problems," Li said. "Also, the government, while admitting people have drug problems in China, doesn't say there is a problem with alcohol, as well.

"There are no special treatment facilities, as there are in the West for people with alcohol dependency, so they are kept with other psychiatric patients. But there are special treatment centres in China for people with drug problems.

"I think educating the public and the government is very important. Because alcoholism is not widely known in China, people often come to hospital at a very late stage of alcohol dependency when they have developed serious physical problems.

"What we try and do is to treat their physical problems first and then tell them about the AA meetings. But a lot of general hospitals still treat only the physical problems."

National push

A report published by the World Health Organization in 2004 said that 3.8 per cent of China's adult population suffered from alcohol dependency. According to 2000 population statistics, China had 1.04 billion people aged 15 and older, so a conservative estimate might be around 30 million.

But there are only a handful of AA groups across China, according to Li, and only a small number of hospitals that offer alcohol treatment programmes.

Li said she hopes to help set up AA groups across the country and educate doctors in general hospitals about alcohol dependency.

"At the moment, we have a lot of patients who come from outside Beijing to my hospital for treatment or to attend AA meetings," Li said.

She said that although general awareness of alcohol problems in China is beginning to grow, she said there is still a long way to go.

Li even launched her own investigation last year that revealed the scale of the problem by visiting a car-making plant in Changchun, capital of the Northeast Jilin Province.

She carried out a drinking survey among the plant's 420 workers.

"Of the 420 workers, 20 per cent had alcohol dependency and 70 per cent suffered with alcohol abuse, so just 10 per cent had no problems with alcohol," Li said.

"While blue-collar workers seem to have the most problems with alcohol dependency, it affects higher educated people, as well. And patients that I see here seem to be getting younger and younger, too.

"But I think the government is now slowly starting to realize that alcohol can be a problem."

With Mandarin and English language meetings now in Beijing, the latest development has been the launch of regular bilingual sessions.

"People at AA meetings are a group that have a common illness and are trying to seek a common solution for one another," John said. "It's as if we are all in an invisible lifeboat, and we don't exclude anybody.

"We welcome anyone who thinks they have a problem. This is something that cuts right across race, creed and language."

(Source: China Daily)