DRUG REHAB, OR NOT...

Hi, for obvious reasons, I choose to be unnamed. Not because I haven't given up drugs, but because otherwise society won't let me forget I ever did. So suffice it to say I'm from the middle class, in my middle age and a businessman. I have a wife and child who're no longer with me. My favourite music was and is 60s and 70s Blues, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Let us start then, from when I, college kid and confirmed brown sugar addict, who'd tried cocaine and LSD only briefly, told the truth at home…

FIRST AND SECOND ATTEMPT

Put into a detoxification centre, the doctor told me to take a two, month holiday as the ultimate cure. This didn't quite work as I carried on with hashish and marijuana and was back on brown sugar in five months. With my father's death and my habit worsening,I started doing the rounds: clean-up centres, shrinks... They'd pop me with substitute pills during the clean up period which made me use brown – almost compulsively – the day I was out. I then joined the famous '12 Step Fellowship Programme', where a periodic group meeting of addicts and ex-addicts serve to put in place a self help theory. This kicked off a process and I actually stopped doing drugs for four years. But then, two mistakes occurred. I stopped attending the meetings, following some disagreements, thinking I didn't need them anymore. And I kept drinking. If one uses alcohol or substitute drugs to take a break from drugs, one is technically still an addict – it's only a matter of time before you come back to your 'favourite drug' again! For me, that time happened – impulsively, as always in the case of a relapse – when I saw a brown sugar addict on the road, and asked him to get me some. Regular usage since landed me with impending gangrene on my fingers and an inhouse detox at a friend's Lonavla residence. Then followed a glorious six year period where I gave up drugs as well as alcohol! I did amazingly well at my investment business, bought a house, got married to an awesome woman and had a child. I also started visiting the Fellowship again, but somehow couldn't use the 'self help' process to look into 'myself'. Addiction persists due to certain character defects. If those aren't quelled, abstinence – whether chemically induced or otherwise – crumbles. So when adverse circumstances (some were financial, others better kept shut about) struck suddenly, I clung to cocaine. Strains showed in my marriage for the first time, and the usage added to the monetary losses. I had to sell my house and move to another city. My wife, with our child, refused to move with me. Post my shift, I went on to do brown sugar, coke and morphine together, with my weight dropping to 45 kgs and my entire arm being struck by impending gangrene. A detox centre I was at, refused to take responsibility for my condition, and my brother stepped in to have me discharged and picked up from there.



FINALLY!



I hated the idea of 're-hab'. I'd often been advised to try it by a counselor or a friend. But my mental block stemmed from an obvious fact – being confined to one place for months on end! You can well imagine the fit I threw here then, when I woke up to find myself not at home, but in the Living Free Foundation Treatment Centre For Substance Abuse. Still reeling from drugs I'd overdone, I didn't consider that going home in this state would have led to more drugs done, this time, to death. Within a month, however, I decided to give this my best shot.

The Living Free Foundation has a drug free system of working on the addicts personality purely through therapy. The targets are the character defects which cause addiction in the first place. One identifies, through counselling, disturbing patterns of thought in one's past. One learns to check one's anger and identify causes for it – both justifiable and unjustifiable ones. Various psychological tools are used to develop attitudes of constructive confrontation and sharing. Also the centre is managed by ex-addicts whereas work at the centre is carried out by those in the re-hab themselves and a system of hierarchy (via seniority) develops responsibility in each member. There are different departments and department heads for areas like 'kitchen', or 'storage'… and a 'chief' on top. The 9 to 14 month period is spread out over three distinct stages to develop the self, interaction and finally responsibility and integration into the outside world. Visits from one's family is denied until the later stages of the programme.

How was I prepared to go through such an ordeal? Besides the overriding thought of clutching at any straw to get my wife and baby back. I realized that such a programme was the only one I hadn't tried. Maybe I needed this constant interaction, even control, to develop what I wanted. The struggle wasn't over with the programme however. After going clean for well over a year, I was staying with a friend in Delhi, who told me he had just relapsed. Shaken that I would too, I spoke quickly other friends within reach to alleviate my anxiety. Then returning to him, I asked him calmly, "Will you throw the stuff out? Else I'll have to stay elsewhere." Soon after, I called Pritam Datta, Honorary Chief Executive Director of Living Free Foundation and asked him whether I could come back every now and then to the centre – to help out.