Drug addicts pledge to reform themselves

By Ati Nurbaiti

WONOSOBO, Central Java (JP): The young man kept pacing, to and fro, asking what the time was. He also asked for flight, train and bus schedules from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, and blurted out, "Should I call home?"

Budi, not his real name, couldn't make up his mind on whether it was the right time to break the bad news and good news to his mother. He knew his father was already on the way. He had already sent a letter but thought a verbal explanation was necessary.

The bad news he had conveyed in the letter was the four-year secret he had kept from his family: that he was a drug addict. The good news: that he was seeking treatment with a healer, at whose house he was staying, in Wonosobo, a two-hour drive from Yogyakarta.

Looking at the clock, Budi, at 21 the youngest in his family, wondered whether his mother in a Jakarta suburb had already fainted reading the letter.

He had left Jakarta with only the clothes he was wearing, leaving for Wonosobo as soon as an acquaintance had told him of some addicts who had been cured of their addiction there. They had come of their own accord, to shake off a dependency that had become unbearable.

"I felt I wanted to die," Budi said. That, he said, would be the only reason drug addicts seek help. "Not really the pain," but the despair, the feeling that "you're just stuck". Also, his fiancee had left him.

Before setting out he had shot up a deadly 0.5 gram of heroin, just in case death could be an easy way out. And on the bus, he said, he added a bit more. But he arrived alive.

His parents, Budi said, never knew anything was wrong although he had lost 10 kilograms in the past few years.

"I'd say I was on a diet," he said.

At this time in the morning, the 21-year-old would usually be having stomach cramps and be going back and forth to the bathroom due to continuous diarrhea. Now, there was no such suffering.

"I've never felt better in such a long time," he said, promoting his healer, Mpu Samiadji, who is also a tobacco farmer and a respected public figure in the area. "And I'm sure I can make it. He (Samiadji) is only a medium. My cure will depend on myself."

What Samiadji does is basically to "improve the patient's stamina" to resist the drugs. From neighbors to Jakarta professionals, he is known for his healing massage techniques and self-made herbal mixtures; he has only started taking in drug addicts early this year.

Besides massages and herbs, he gives the youngsters advice and confidence, and trains them in the breathing techniques of the Sinalika martial arts school which he leads.

Challenge

It is too soon to pass judgment on the treatment of drug addicts here. "That boy should have sent a letter," said Samiadji, worrying about another addict who had left but had promised to come back after only a few months of treatment.

The addicts know their main challenge is not during the few months spent with the 85-year-old man and his peaceful hilly surroundings in the Pagerejo village of the Kertek district.

"I don't know whether I can face those people again..." said Roy, another addict under treatment, of his college friends.

One cannot point to which campus has the most addicts, he said. Campus parking lots, canteens and lobbies are among the open places in which addicts easily get their supply, besides on various streets.

Palbatu, Kampung Bali and Tanah Abang, all in Central Jakarta, and the apartments in Kota, West Jakarta, are only a few of the places where suppliers buy their stuff to sell to addicts; both senior students and first-year students.

It takes a cool head to keep your parents unaware.

Budi said: "I hardly do drugs at home, I just stash a small amount for emergencies." To hide the telling signs of no appetite: "I eat before I leave. I tell my mom I've eaten at night when I haven't."

Shooting up with needles results in a faster "high" -- and much more pain when it runs out. Roy and Budi have been addicts for years, needing more and more to get high -- one gram of heroin, they claim, for one hour.

Then the pains, or sakaw, begin: fevers, shivering, the feeling that something is stretching your backbone and diarrhea.

"Once I saw a classmate bring several underpants, for changing, in his schoolbag," Roy said.

More cash is needed with the increasing dependency.

"About Rp 1 million a week," Budi said. With the high rate of the U.S. dollar a few months ago, one gram of heroin reached Rp 1 million, previously the same amount cost Rp 130,000.

"That was the only time I had to sell something," said Roy of his beloved surfing board. He was no longer good at it anyway.

Whereas initially the drugs made one bold physically and mentally ("you get a lot of girls because you get to be good at talking and being romantic"), in time, constant paranoia and hallucinations set in. Roy was no longer in shape to face the waves. He would feel paranoid about whatever he was doing, at everything and everyone.

Most of the time, the students claimed there was no need to sell things or steal, somehow, "the money was always there". They insisted they always paid their school fees, which contributed to the lack of parental suspicion.

Roy said he has tried rehabilitation with a Jakarta psychiatrist but said he could not stand the therapy; involving much sleep-inducing medication, which made the brain inactive.

Budi said he wasn't interested in a well-known rehabilitation center in Jakarta. "No good. You're greeted by a cleaning service employee or some other employee whispering that he's got good stuff." Addicts would get supplies from visiting friends or steal needles from nurses, which were reused several times.

Then, he said, all that is needed is a bit of margarine to give old needles the necessary grease to shoot up.

Addicts have no fear of the law, even if they have heard that suppliers can get away much easily than addicts: the family of an arrested addict could pay at least Rp 20 million for his release, while a supplier with good police relations could walk away for just Rp 500,000.

Roy and Budi say they started using drugs in high school out of curiosity; and now they wonder if they can make the best of a second chance.

Roy said he would never forgive himself for not admitting his actions when his father was still alive; now, he is anxious to save his remaining family, "through saving myself".

He is set on having his own design studio, though he feels much of his talent has been wasted. Budi, who studies at an academy of finance, gets down on bended knees and declares without doubt: "I want to have my own small credit bank."

But first, "I just want to reform myself."