Where are the African tales of personal struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction? I’ve been studying the history of alcohol use in Africa for more than twenty-five years and more recently I’ve also been looking at drug use. Yet I can’t recall a single such story in my unsystematic sampling of African creative writing. Here in the United States, hardly a week goes by, it seems, without publication of a memoir or fictional account (or public celebrity testimony) of the individual torments and collateral damage associated with alcohol and drug abuse and the redemption (and royalties) found in sobriety. Why don’t we have an African Mary Karr? Why aren’t African writers cashing in?
Are Africans simply more abstemious? This is hardly the case. Scholars have amply documented African drinking practices. The history of drug use is much less studied, but in the recent past at least illicit drug use has become ubiquitous in many African societies. And the fact is that African fiction and autobiography are awash in alcohol—and increasingly provide rich accounts of local drug cultures as well. But the addiction story is mostly missing. Why is that?