Decades After Alcohol Ban, Iran Admits It Has a Problem<br />Whenever I would feel pressure, I would get a bottle<br />and drink it." Mr. Konjedi’s wife, Samin — they met through A.A. — said she needed at least two meetings a day to prevent her from taking up the bottle.<br />The relaxing of prohibition has allowed addicts like Mehdi to emerge from the shadows<br />and embrace a new circle of friends — recovering alcoholics — who greeted him as he entered a West Tehran apartment one recent evening.<br />Aware Anonymous said that I constantly need a dose to cure my disease.<br />Reza Konjedi said that These days there is so much alcohol available, simply punishing everybody and using force is no longer working,<br />Since 2015, when the Health Ministry ordered addiction treatment centers to care for alcoholics, dozens of private clinics<br />and government institutions have opened help desks and special wards for alcoholics.<br />Bootlegging is also a major problem; dozens of people die from alcohol poisoning every year after consuming<br />low-quality moonshine — 135 in 2013, the latest year for which official statistics are available.
