NEUROTICS ANONYMOUS SOOTHES MEXICO CITY

For many of Mexico City's 16 million residents, Neurotics Anonymous is the last resort to help them fight the daily smog, traffic jams and noise that are driving them to the edge of madness.

"I'm on a bad path. I want to set a building on fire or kill my wife, whom I have come to hate more than anyone else in the world," said Luis, a 43-year-old businessman, at a recent meeting of NA.

Luis said he felt better by just venting his frustrations during meetings at one of 50 Neurotics Anonymous centers in sprawling Mexico City.

"During 19 years, I went along feeling sick of my wife, treating her like a mop," said Luis, who turned to NA three years ago.

Luis told newcomers that neurosis knew no age or class, noting that NA attracted people as young as 10 and as old as 80, rich and poor.

"I can now take into account that suffering is the same whether you have one peso or thousands," he said.

The Health and Assistance Ministry estimated that nine of every 10 adults in Mexico City suffered some degree of neurosis, caused mainly by the smog, noise and congestion.

"It's like death," said a 17-year-old electrician. "To get on the subway you have to go in swinging; you need more blows to catch a bus. In my work there are aggressions and more aggressions. It truly makes one bad."

The NA offices are open seven days a week and the program follows the basic outlines of Alcoholics Anonymous.

"Doctors, organ-grinders, all come here and all are the same," said Salvador, a lawyer who started NA four years ago after he developed chest

pains from slamming his fist into walls.

"When we first come here," Salvador said, "we deny we are sick, just like the alcoholics, but the majority deny it because they think it's the same as accepting that they are crazy."

Credit: By Bruno Lopez Kupitsky, United Press International