Drug addicts pledge to reform themselves

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."