Al Bachri Husin, 'father' to drug addicts

By Deka Kurniawan

JAKARTA (JP): Psychiatrist Al Bachri Husin's name comes to the fore in any talks about drug abuse here because he had helped develop the renowned Drug Addiction Hospital (RSOK) founded by then Jakarta Governor Ali Sadikin in 1977.

Dr. Al handled thousands of cases of drug dependence during his 20 years of service in the state drug rehabilitation center, and yet he still felt that he had not done enough. The urge to do more was satisfied when he resigned in 1997 and set up his own Wisma Adiksi (Addiction House). "Their suffering touches me so. Who will help them, if we don't," he said in a recent interview.

Al said he now has greater scope to apply his knowledge and pursue his objective of saving as many drug victims as he can, especially by integrating the Wisma with the five clinics and hospitals where he practices psychiatry. Since its establishment, Al and the Wisma have treated hundreds of drug addicts with great success. The secret is, "because I love them," said the doctor.

Al, who is now director of surveillance of narcotics, psychotropic and addictive substances at the Ministry of Health, believes in the saying, "Never fight fire with fire." The community has punished addicts for too long through isolation, humiliation and pressure, basically treating them as the scum of the society.

"They should instead be treated with kindness, serenity," said the 55-year-old doctor who said he tries to have empathy and be sincere in giving attention to his patients. Every morning he visits patients and engages them in small pep talks. He jokes around with them.

The addicts open their heart to Al and consider him as family. In fact, none of his patients and their families call him "Doctor"; they call him Papi (father).

Al, who proudly calls himself "Papi Junkie", throws away the aloofness that usually separates doctors from patients, addressing them the way he would his own children.

"He doesn't treat us as patients, but as his children and friends," said Chilam, one of Al's former patients who now works in Wisma Adiksi.

The closeness to patients is something that Al banks on in order to revive the patients' spirit for living. Many of his former patients are now useful members of the society, often with a high educational background.

"Many of the former patients of Wisma Adiksi still call me up just to say, 'Papi, I'm still clean'," said Al, who has one daughter, Cempaka, from his wife Dr. Tri Mulyani.

Al treasures those calls because as a doctor and a father figure, there's nothing more valuable than his children's success in living a life without drugs. "My heart blooms each time they open their heart to me, telling me that now, when they're stressed they do not automatically look for putaw (low-grade heroin)," he said.

Al became interested in treatment for drug abuse when he was still young and witnessed how some of his friends fell victim to drugs while others did not. "I wanted to learn, medically, how some people were affected while others were not," said the doctor who grew up in Medan.

That was why he entered the medical school of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, completing his studies in 1973. After working in Sumatra and Bali as a general practitioner, he went to Jakarta to work at the Ministry of Health and the Drug Addiction Hospital (RSKO).

One day in 1977, on the way to work, Al had an accident. His motorcycle hit a bajaj (three-wheeled motorized vehicle) and he passed out. When he came to, he found himself inside a house. The person who had helped him was a drug addict.

This incident prodded him to learn more about addicts. "I owed my life to one of them, it's only natural that I should give a part of my life to them," he said. He then specialized in addiction psychiatry, a field still unpopular in Indonesia. Even back then Al had predicted that one day the country would become a country of addicts. "I've been shouting my lungs out about this danger, but not many people have heeded me," he said.

Upon completing his postgraduate studies in 1981, Al started a psychiatry practice serving drug addicts. But he soon became disenchanted, because he continued to encounter the same people. "Which meant that the therapy I gave them was not effective enough and I failed to cure them," he said.

Al's colleagues, too, were at the time losing interest in the existing treatment which only placed patients on a detoxification program. "As soon as the detox was over, the patients started using again," said Al, a member of the London-based International Group on Rapid Opiate Detoxification.

Al, a former WHO expert staff, took up the challenge and went overseas to study various treatments and finally concluded that medical treatment was not the only option. He discovered that treatment became effective when it was placed in the context of Therapeutic Community (TC).

Unfortunately, such an approach had yet to be applied in Indonesia and Al had to recommend that his patients be brought to countries where it was available.

Al said he had actually tried to implement the approach when he was still director of RSKO, but rigid bureaucracy and a "nursing culture still dominated by nurses" hampered his effort.

"TC is inapplicable at the RSKO because the nurses are not capable of approaching patients in a humane way. Rather, (for the nurses, treatment) is about power," he said. "Addicts, on the other hand, do not want to be pushed around."

In 1996, a group of Al's former patients, upon returning from successful treatment abroad, discussed with him the possibility of setting up a TC-based rehabilitation center. Al then initiated Sanggar Aland, a nonprofit center for drug addicts, but shortages of funding and volunteers forced it to be closed down shortly after it opened.

Only after he resigned from RSKO were Al and his wife able to establish the Wisma Adiksi and maintain it well. But for Al this is far from enough -- he wants to set up a university geared to accommodate former addicts because, "even though their mental capability might have been diminished by drugs, they still have the right to develop a career."

"Existing universities usually shun them, which is why they need a special place," said Al Bachri Husin, again expressing his willingness to embrace the "scum" of society as his Arabic name implies: "the good sea."

"I do all this not because I can, but because Allah gives me the strength to do so," he said.