AT WAR WITH MYSELF: Felix Eupal’s astounding struggle for soberness

Felix Eupal
It is 5am in the morning, or rather a few minutes to…I can tell, even without a wrist watch or phone, due to the sound of doors cracking open outside. There are constant yells outside: “Ritah! F*&k you, what made you leave your village? Open up, you whore!”

As vulgar, ugly and disheartening as this sounds, this is a normal way of waking up a shopkeeper in Kimwanyi Zone, Wandegeya, a suburb just two kilometres from Kampala’s city centre. It is a place where abnormal is normal and where you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

To many, this ghetto is known as Katanga; a place with peculiar possibilities, an ever-increasing crime rate, drug abuse, marijuana smoking, excessive sale and consumption of illicit alcohol, prostitution, gambling, child labour, bar fights, domestic violence and regular pickpocketing.

Survival in this place requires one’s sixth sense to be on super-alert at all times, leaving nothing to chance. Yet for many months, this is what I called home. In the room as I slowly start coming awake, everyone is awake and a loud voice shouts: “Gwe pulofesa, weleza pisito eyo,” Luganda, loosely translated to mean, “Professor, send that pistol”.

My nickname in the ghetto is ‘professor’, because of my high literacy level and the fact that I wear spectacles. And no, I don’t own a gun; pisito here is slang for a plastic bottle of waragi, because once pocketed, it kind of resembles a pistol.

In the crowded, messy, smelly room – my bedroom that night, I turn slowly lest I inconvenience the person next to me, to pass on the pisito. Snuggled like puppies, on the unmade bedbug-and-lice-infested mattresses on the floor, I turn and shout back something equally crude as I pass the small bottle.

This one bottle is shared among about three people and the unwritten rule is that it has to return to the owner to finish the last sip before another bottle is opened by someone else or bought from the nearby shop. That is how the day starts in this place where we pay Shs 2,000 for sleeping space, or Shs 3,000 for ‘VIP’ – VIP is where you get to sleep on a mattress with just one other person.

The law of the jungle applies, every day. There are no rules; they are made as the day goes.

HOW DID I GET HERE?

So, how did a renowned print journalist (it is at The Observer that I cut my writing teeth about 15 years ago), radio sports analyst, aspiring academic with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree under his sleeve, get to be in a such a place?

I was not in Katanga for some investigative, award-winning undercover piece, neither was I doing research for a project. This was my home and your ‘strange’, was my ‘absolute normal’. Honestly, I can’t explain how I got myself into such a situation, but what I do know is that, I enjoyed the pain, the constant hangovers, vomiting and fever rushes.

In a way, I felt that I deserved it and God was punishing me for the wrong decisions, manipulation, lies, selfishness, pride, egocentrism, disappointments, broken hearts, unfulfilled promises and broken families and marriages that I had caused.

Drinking for me was fun, cool and a stylish way of living; at least that is what I felt when I first tasted alcohol in my 15th year of being on earth. This grew until my university days and progressed when I was given the opportunity to correspond for The Observer while in my final year at Makerere University, where I was pursuing a BA in Mass Communication.

I was contributing in the Arts/Culture and Sports sections, occasionally pitching in on any other beat since we were a weekly newspaper. The frequency of my covering social events grew tremendously, and so did the drinking, but by then it was manageable. In fact, I became one of the best entertainment journalists with my observant, behind-the-scenes coverage of the industry and its players.

I was the entertainment journalist event organizers loved to hate. It gave me purpose, meaning, poise and with it came so many things: temptations of payola, which was preached to be ethically evil, but sometimes became a necessary evil, punctuated with binge drinking, unending access to nightclubs, private parties, etc.

Before I knew it, I was not just attending events; I had become an event myself. Media agencies, show promoters, producers, artiste managers had me on speed dial. Beer companies’ communication directors treated me like the lost nephew that returned home.

THE TIPPING POINT

All this happened without me knowing that I was becoming an abnormal drinker; I was not drinking like other men. The biggest change, however, was when my mother Norah Florence Namugabo suffered a stroke in January 2011. It tore me apart watching her wither away, as I became her caregiver in Mulago hospital.

I was helpless, confused, hurt and by the time she passed on in March that year, I hated the world. That was the hardest time of my life. They say time heals all wounds, but they lied. My world froze!

My clock stopped, yet time remained moving for the rest of the world. At a time of loss, there is nothing easier than pity and nothing harder to accept than the truth, because there are no easier ways around grief. During the last 14 years since her passing, I have taken alcohol to stop feeling the loss.

In a way, the alcohol numbed the pain. The terrible sleep patterns were replaced with countless hangovers. So, I continued to drink to maintain that. I drunk for the past which I could not change, and for a future I was not promised. But little did I know about the economics of addiction; alcohol was not my problem but by turning it into my solution, I had sharpened the shovel to dig myself into the pit I found myself in.

That pit swallowed many of my dreams, hopes, aspirations, promises, including the most important one: a promise to mum on her deathbed that “I will make you proud, no matter what”. Soon, my life became unmanageable. The Observer cut me loose, from a retained journalist to correspondent status.

Sanyu FM where I was a co-host of the Saturday morning sports show – Sports Limited – had also had enough of me showing up clearly tipsy for the show. I would later get a second chance to right my wrongs professionally, when I was the successful candidate at Fireworks Advertising Agency with their Public Relations wing, Brainchild Burson Masteller, now Brainchild Burson as a senior PR and digital marketing executive.

But that stint lasted only ten months, as the bottle and my struggles took centre stage. The only sensible and honorable thing I accomplished during those turbulent years was finish my master’s degree in Public Administration and Management in January 2018, from Makerere University.

Now disgruntled, jobless, clueless with no one to blame but myself, I went into an alcoholic tailspin, drinking recklessly, living dangerously, carelessly and worthlessly. Doom and gloom followed. My landlord threw me out over rent arrears. My circle of friends changed from corporates and journalists to those we shared a commonality, drunkenness.

Before I knew it, shame, guilt, anxiety, restlessness and manipulation became my closest allies. I hopped from friend to friend, crashing in their homes for a few days or a couple of weeks, until I exhausted my list. When that happened, I went into hiding and was even reported missing by friends on social media on September 19, 2019, after them failing to see me for months.

As pathetic as it may sound, that got me to realise that I was still loved; friends, family, colleagues in the media put in endless efforts to find me, but I was not lost. I had just dropped out of their world, and now lived in a new one they could never suspect me to be in.

Then in 2020, in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Felix Ferdinand Eupal, my father, was diagnosed with prostate cancer and throat cancer. Having been an absentee father most of my life, his sickness did not take a toll on me, until much later. There was so much to ask him, but I never garnered the courage.

On February 27, 2021, he breathed his last. I did not cry at his burial (I cried like a baby when mum died) but deep down I was screaming – once again, the bottle came to the rescue. From there on, there was no turning back. I had no father, no mother, no home, nothing to fight for. I convinced myself, I was done.

I entrenched myself more into the ghetto. Katanga became my companion. Where the party found me is where I spent the night: bars, makeshift restaurants, verandas, name it. I honed my skills of fitting in by standing out, earning the respect of renowned thugs in this filthy place.

I had picked some of them from police cells; so, I was assured of protection and an endless flow of hard liquor. I had helped them secure national IDs, was their voice of reason in constant confrontations, a relationship counselor when domestic violence broke out and a sports betting expert on all matters to do with football.

SALVATION

Meanwhile, my drinking was worse. My friends and family feared for the worst. Alcohol had enslaved me to the lowest of the low. A friend called Julius had just spent six months in a place in Gulu, and returned a totally changed man, free of alcohol and narcotics.

My sister and my girlfriend decided this was the place I should be taken to. I did not hesitate, because I knew I needed help. I needed divine intervention. On March 1, 2025, I walked through the doors of P.A.C.T.A Uganda, a not-for-profit rehabilitation centre in Gulu city. P.A.C.T.A stands for Prevention, Awareness, Counseling and Treatment for Alcoholism and Addiction Illnesses.

Ninety-three days from March 1, I walked out of P.A.C.T.A reborn, fresh, clean, sober with a new perspective on life. My spiritual bankruptcy had been replaced by hope, perseverance and a rock-solid belief in a Higher Power and urge to help another suffering alcoholic out there.

MOVING FORWARD

Last week, I celebrated making five months sober. Has the journey been easy? Heck no! At P.A.C.T.A, I suffered the worst withdrawal symptoms I had to be hospitalized at St Mary’s hospital Lacor for two weeks.

I slipped into a coma for a day and gave the doctors a scare as my system threatened to shut down from the decades of alcohol abuse. The doctor told me, my sensory nerves were so in sync with alcohol, they could not function without the other.

I lay in hospital, drip after drip, with no other remedy but to ride the discomfort out. I cannot forget the tremors. The pain. The nosebleeds. By the third week, I was back to P.A.C.T.A and could finally walk by myself and sit through the classes.

If you too are tired of alcohol/drugs taking over your life, remember it is okay to not be okay; just reach out for help. The Lord who saved me can save you too. For now, I am part of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with New Life Restoration, to help others, and also cement my sobriety.

We meet at Christ the King church in Kampala every Tuesday and Friday, 1pm to 2pm, free of charge. To join us, the only requirement is your desire to stop drinking.

eupal.ff@gmail.com