Raised in a financially weak household, Narasappa was introduced to drinking at a young age. By his early 20s, the habit had taken firm root. Working at his uncle’s glass shop after dropping out of school, he began earning regularly, but most of his income went towards alcohol. “I would earn thousands… but I never supported my parents. We were very poor, and yet I never helped them,” he says. His dependence deepened over time, reaching a point where alcohol became, in his words, “like a medicine” to sleep and function. By the early 1990s, his life had completely unravelled. Yet, he says, he was not suicidal – only trapped in a cycle of addiction he could not escape.…