Later today, as we wave another week goodbye, people around South Africa will crack a cold one.

Fair enough – I don’t know about you, but it felt like an almightily long five days this side.

We do love a drink, and a BusinessTech article from earlier this month stated that we have the fifth-highest alcohol consumption rate in the world, with 28,9 litres of pure alcohol consumed per alcohol drinker per year.

We fared slightly better when that consumption was spread across the entire population, coming at 52nd overall, with 9,3 litres consumed per capita.

Over in the small European country of Moldova, there seems to be a really serious drinking problem, which has been covered by TIME:

Moldova has the highest levels of alcohol consumption in the world and the highest death rate linked to drinking. One in four deaths are related to alcohol while the world’s average is one in 20. The latest 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) data found that people over the age of 15 drink on average 15.2 liters of pure alcohol (including alcohol made at home or illegally) per capita each year, the equivalent of around 167 bottles of wine.

Following closely is Lithuania with 15 liters and the Czech Republic with 14.4, while Europe’s average is 9.8.

“Every family has a person with a drinking problem,” says Tudor Vasiliev, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction and a coordinator of the National Alcohol Control Program.

The problem is so bad that the mayor of a small town with a population of around 5 000, Puhoi, offered any couple who could stay sober for six months a cash prize of 1 000 leu ($240) and jobs.

20 couples entered, and only one succeeded. Within a few months, the couple had gone back to drinking, lost their jobs, and the mayor vowed to never again run such a competition.

That town, in particular, has serious problems:

In Puhoi, alcohol is the lifeblood of the economy and the community. Almost everybody works for the local Asconi winery [pictured below], and almost everyone distills their own wine. Alcohol is currency, used to pay people for small jobs and favors. “You’re not a person if you don’t drink,” says Nicolae Rusu, a 35-year-old construction worker…

Accurate figures for Moldova are hard to reach because up to 70% of alcohol consumed is homemade wine, says Olga Penina, a lecturer of Public Health at Chisinau’s State University of Medicine and Pharmacy. The wine-drinking culture sets Moldova and Georgia apart from other post-Soviet countries, where people prefer to drink spirits. The “cult of wine is strong”, says Penina. “Fighting it is problematic.”

The country has a higher rate of liver cancer and liver cirrhosis than anywhere else in Europe, and life expectancies for men and women are 11 and nine years less than the European average, respectively.

Some even go as far as to say that Moldova’s inaction with regards curbing the problem is because it’s a way of “keeping the population passive”, and drunks don’t usually tend to get involved with any form of political protest.

Poverty and low wages are driving Moldovans away, particularly those who come from villages. About a fifth of the rural population live in poverty and the United Nations Development Program estimates that Moldovans living abroad provide over a quarter of their family’s income back at home, where the average wage is 5,700 Leu ($320) a month…

“There’s a lot of hopelessness here,” says [ Ivan Lungu, a 38-year-old recovering alcoholic]. “There’s nothing for young people to do. You can’t start a business, it’s too risky unless you can afford to pay bribes.” He struggled with alcoholism for over a decade. “Drinking gave me relief, short-term relief. It made me indifferent,” he says.

I think many young South Africans can relate to that last sentence.

You can read the rest of TIME’s lengthy look at Moldova’s problems, as well as some possible solutions, here.

[source:time]