The Trouble With Tippling : Poverty, cheap booze and years of Soviet influence have spread alcoholism to epidemic proportions in Mongolia.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)(Illustration)

My name is Mongolmatur. And I am an alcoholic." He is a great bear of a man, as burly as the image of Genghis Khan on the wall behind him, almost too big for the tight circle of recovering addicts crowded into the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Choibalsan. Yet Mongolmatur fears a foe as deadly as the 13th-century conqueror. "My father died of drink. My elder brother died of drink," he says in a litany familiar not just to the rough Mongolian men around him. "Now I must quit before my mother dies. I want her to be proud of me."

Mongolians have much to be proud of in their dozen years of independence. Since the Soviets withdrew in 1990, the country has developed a thriving democracy and free press. Yet Mongolia is also now waking up to a post- Soviet hangover--an alcohol problem that is ravaging its cities and families. In urban areas the average Mongolian downs a staggering 32 liters of vodka per year, close to the infamously high Russian consumption rate. According to official statistics, more than half of adult Mongolians are believed to "drink excessively." Figures released this month indicate that drunkenness fueled 48.3 percent of all murders last year in Mongolia, while serious crime shot up by 61 percent over 2000. Nationwide alcohol causes more than 30 percent of a skyrocketing divorce rate and is linked to more than 60 percent of all crimes. "People don't know how to relax, only how to drink!" complains Dr. Tsetsegdary, a senior medical officer at the Ministry of Health (who like many Mongolians uses only one name). "Alcoholism is a crisis situation for Mongolia right now."

Many locals blame the Soviets for the epidemic. Choibalsan, a town of 48,000 in eastern Mongolia, was once filled with more than 100,000 Russians, mostly soldiers; the city is now served by 30 distilleries. Still, says another member of Mongolmatur's AA circle, "the Russians imported vodka, but they did not force us to drink it." Those who claim that alcoholism is a purely modern problem have a hard time explaining the legendary bacchanals of the Mongol khans. (Genghis Khan's own son, Tolui, died of drink.) Some scientists ...