Almost every family has a black sheep, that one person who drinks excessively and causes havoc, the one who can't keep a job or a wife, the one who is constantly borrowing to cover never-ending problems.

Hands up if you've never been to a crisis meeting of relatives to discuss how to aid a wayward relative feck on destroying their lives and making everyone else's miserable.

 This list could go on and on, and in the majority of cases, alcoholism is to a fault. Because you can't divorce a relative and start over, you keep having these intervention meetings in the hopes that this relative will one day listen to you, which sometimes does not work.

A friend recently told me of an incident with her elder brother that always makes her chuckle, even though it was a source of anguish at the time. Her brother had a knack for drinking a little too much, and when he did, he started fights and was always kicked out of the pubs where he was drinking, returning to the home he shared with his wife and child messy, dirty, and battered.

 This friend received a phone call early one morning. It had to be her brother. He had been arrested the night before for failing to pay for liquor he had consumed at a certain nightclub.

He warned her that if he didn't pay the bill within the next hour, he would be charged in court the next day. This friend, alarmed, hurried to the police station to get her brother out. She was told the bill was Sh5, 600, which she paid.

When her brother emerged from the cell and spotted her, he realized he was a free man, and much to my friend's disgust, he began to insult the police officers stationed at the front desk. Obviously, the liquor he had consumed the night before had not yet faded off.

My acquaintance was experiencing fear and anxiety at that point, afraid that he would be hauled back to the cage. But the police simply looked at him, irritated, and shoved him out. This friend would assume that they had grown accustomed to such conduct from the drunks they arrested on a daily basis and were relieved to get rid of him.

 She was so offended by her brother's disrespectful attitude that she thought she had done her nice deed for the day and gave him a Sh100 note and ordered him to find his way home. She had no means of traveling with him in the same vehicle, and furthermore, he stank like hell.

 This is one of the few drunkenness situations with a happy ending because, a few years later, this friend's brother managed to kick his alcoholism and has been sober for years. He is not doing as well financially as his siblings, but he is able to care for his family with occasional assistance. This is what I would term a success tale.