This study explores types of alcohol and surrogates consumed, patterns of consumption, and reasons behind noncommercial alcohol consumption among alcohol-dependent patients in Belarus. The study was conducted in the Belarusian city Grodno in 2012 with 223 alcoholics admitted to narcological clinic using structured interviews. The results suggest that at least 20.2% of alcohol dependent patients regularly consume samogon and 11.8% of patients use surrogates, the most popular among which are medications with a high percentage of ethanol and industrial spirits. The belief that, according to quality criteria, samogon exceeds licensed vodka is the main motive for its consumption. The results of this study suggest the existence of the problem of consumption of noncommercial alcohol among alcohol dependent patients in Belarus. 1. Introduction Noncommercial alcohol has recently become the subject of much attention from alcohol policy experts [1, 2]. The problem of the consumption of noncommercial alcohol in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries has attracted the attention of researchers and specialists in the public healthcare field after the epidemic of poisonings by the so-called surrogate alcohols, which swept across Russia and Belarus in 2006 [3–5]. In the second half of 2006, about 11 thousand people in 22 regions of Russia came to hospitals with symptoms of poisoning by alcohol surrogates [3]. During forensic chemical analysis of material from the corpses of those who died as a result of poisoning by surrogates in Russia in 2006, the presence of higher alcohols and their esters and glycols (propanol, isopropanol, butanol, isobutanol, isopropanol, and acetone) was discovered [6, 7]. The main macromorphological manifestations of poisonings by substitutes include severe dystrophic changes in all the internal organs (except the adrenal glands) with predominant damage to the liver and kidneys, which was confirmed by the corresponding clinical picture with development in the majority of victims of jaundice with the presence of bile pigments in the lumen of the renal tubules, detected by histological examination [8]. Despite the extreme urgency of the problem, our knowledge with respect to the prevalence of the consumption of surrogates in CIS, as well as the style and motives of their consumption, remains fragmented [9–13]. That said, knowledge of the social and epidemiological correlates of this phenomenon is a necessary condition for the development of a prevention strategy. Isolated studies devoted to this problem suggest that the main
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