Sibusisiwe Chibaya
IT IS 6pm on a Tuesday evening in Harare. A local bottle store is already packed. The clinking of alcoholic beverage bottles and loud laughter drown out the noise of traffic outside.
To a casual observer, this looks like pure celebration. But if you sit closer and listen to the conversations, the topics are heavy: rising rent, the struggle to find formal jobs, and the endless anxiety of making ends meet.
But while economists view this strictly as a financial crisis, psychologists see something else entirely. This is not just a drinking habit. It is a nationwide mental health emergency.
When we talk about alcohol abuse, society often focuses on physical dependency. We picture an addict who shakes in the morning until they get a drink. Because many Zimbabweans can go days without drinking, they believe they are completely fine. However, modern psychological science tells a different story. For thousands of people across the country, the issue is not dependency; it is the psychological need for emotional numbing.
In psychology, this behaviour is explained by the Self-Medication Hypothesis propounded by Edward J. Khantzian, a psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. This theory states that individuals often use substances to manage severe stress, anxiety, or trauma when they lack healthy emotional outlets. When everyday life in Zimbabwe feels incredibly heavy due to socio-economic realities, alcohol acts as a quick psychological shield.
The magic trick happens inside the brain. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. It temporarily shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for critical thinking, planning, and worrying. When a person drinks, their ability to process stress drops. Daily pressures don’t disappear, but the brain’s ability to feel anxious about them is temporarily turned off. Suddenly, the heavy weight of tomorrow feels incredibly light.
This relief comes from a process called negative reinforcement. In behavioural psychology, negative reinforcement occurs when a behaviour is repeated because it removes something unpleasant. If drinking alcohol successfully removes emotional pain and stress, the brain quickly learns that drinking is the easiest survival tool.
The danger, however, is the chemical trap that follows. As the alcohol wears off, the brain suffers a sharp crash in dopamine, the chemical responsible for happiness and calm. The next morning, the original real-life problems are still there, but the individual’s psychological capacity to handle them is lower. This creates a vicious cycle: the user must drink again, not because their body physically craves the alcohol, but because they need to escape the sudden rush of returning anxiety.
If our nation is spending over US$1 billion a year to escape reality, simply telling people to “just stop drinking” will never work. Preaching moral lessons or arresting people does not solve the root problem.To tackle this crisis, Zimbabwe needs a massive shift toward accessible mental health support. Today, the budgeted figure stands at approximately US$5 to 6 million, directed toward institutionalised treatment of stress-related diseases. This is the alternative to self-medication through abusing alcohol.To the extent that young girls are soaking tampons with vodka and shoving them up their vaginas and rectums just to get a high, that is the opportunity cost of not investing in institutions that provide therapy to deal with psychological health issues. Given the recent anti-drug campaign spearheaded by the First Lady and the Angel of Hope Foundation, which is making tremendous efforts in alleviating drug and substance abuse in our country, the prayer is that equal attention be afforded alcohol and alcohol abuse. Kirby & Barry (2012) conducted a landmark study analysing nationally representative data from high school seniors in the United States using Guttman scaling.
They established that alcohol was the single most common primary gateway drug, preceding the use of tobacco, marijuana, and other illicit substances. Students who initiated alcohol consumption early exhibited a significantly higher likelihood of progressing to illicit substance abuse.
Zimbabwe must invest in community counselling, create free mental health spaces in our suburbs, and teach healthy stress-management tools in our universities and workplaces.
Sibusisiwe Chibaya is a Psychology Honors degree student at Great Zimbabwe University.