Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka

9. A Goddess of Wrath: Treatments

9 A Goddess of Wrath: Treatments “There’s a shrink on every corner in the USA,” asserted Titus. “There’s a kasippu tavern on every corner in Naeaegama,”Siri replied. He continued,“Those are the mental hospitals here!” Siri’s claim that kasippu taverns replace mental hospitals in Sri Lanka reflects simultaneously the dearth of actual facilities supplying psychological and psychiatric aid, and the rationalizing fiction that drinking can help people forget their troubles.In this chapter,I examine the resources villagers draw upon for help with dependence and other sorts of abusive drinking. Drinkers’ family members and neighbors often impose informal but surprisingly effective sanctions against destructive drinking. These sanctions work against drunken comportment that exceeds the local within-limits rules and against long-term heavy drinking that threatens family respectability . When informal sanctions fail, people turn to other authorities, particularly medical and religious practitioners. Here I consider community -administered correctives and medical and spiritual cures, exploring their strengths in changing drinking behavior and habits. Community-Administered Correctives Although many societies allow people to drink and get drunk, social constraints can and do control drinking, especially when drinkers threaten to do harm to themselves or others. People in Naeaegama recognized the problems caused by both occasional intoxication and long-term heavy drinking. For the most part, the community policed drinking behaviors on its own, drawing on a number of possible correctives. Some correctives 202 Breaking the Ashes villagers administered themselves, including humiliation, family pressure, and the threat of physical punishment. Others they hoped that doctors, monks, or police officers would deliver. These correctives varied in suitability and effectiveness, with some of the seemingly weaker ones being quite potent (Heath and Rosovsky 1998). In this section I consider some of the informal sanctions and semi-formal preventative measures that people in the Naeaegama area employed against destructive drinking behaviors. Local community members, especially young boys, administered informal social sanctions on inappropriate intoxicated behavior. Most local drinkers conformed to social expectations of drunken comportment, but occasionally intoxicated changes for the worse exceeded acceptable limits (MacAndrew and Edgerton 2003). As discussed in other chapters, teenage boys restrained deviant drinking behaviors by hooting at intoxicated neighbors and playing pranks on them when they passed out. Young men chastised drunkards with mild physical inconvenience and considerable public humiliation. Freely circulating stories of creative punishments warned drinkers of the risks of excess. Although Naeaegama rules governing allowable drunken comportment generally discouraged physical violence, villagers did consider hitting obstreperous drinkers an effective disciplinary option. On the topic of alcohol, villagers considered Buddhist monk Ananda Thero strict (saerayi, literally strong, cruel, or rough). When I mentioned that I had heard he chased intoxicated people out of his temple compound, the monk affirmed,“I chase them out the gate and hit them too! Drinkers disturb the sober people.” Ananda Thero claimed that despite being intoxicated, drinkers still had enough volition to control their aggressive behaviors. If they learned that they would face punishment for their actions, they would not trouble other people when they took liquor.“Drinking alcohol is an excuse to go out and act like that. This is some sort of pride for the drinker. The only medicine is to hit the man,”the monk concluded. But he only resorted to physical discipline when his advice was ignored, and he never recommended it to others. He stated,“A monk can’t tell women or men to hit anyone; it is against our religion.” By inflicting public humiliation and promising violence, Ananda Thero sent a clear message to the community that he did not condone any liquor-associated anti-social behaviors on temple grounds.1 1. Samarasinghe discusses the bad effects that follow from community acceptance of drunken misbehavior (2005, 7, 18, 33). He suggests that community-level interventions can change local perceptions about drunken behavior. “Allegedly alcohol-induced aggression declines, despite A Goddess of Wrath 203 Villagers tacitly approved of physical punishment and imprisonment for known heavy drinkers. The police caught Mangala at Amarapala’s kasippu tavern in early April 2006. Because he had several prior cases against him, Mangala received a Rs. 5,000 fine [Rs. 4,113 in 2004 figures]. He could not pay, and none of his relatives bailed him out, so Mangala spent nine days in jail. Telling me this story, Siri opined, “They should put drinkers in prison for six months so they can’t...