Helping addicts takes some tough love
Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
"How do you tell if a kid is smoking a joint from a regular cigarette?" asked the man in his 50s.
"If they blow on it like this," David Djaelani Gordon answered, putting his thumb and index finger in front of his mouth, miming a few short drags and passing the imaginary joint to the next person.
His face creased into an imitation of someone getting high.
"What's the effect? How does it feel?" asked another parent.
David grinned. "Colors are brighter, music nicer, food tastes better, even sex is better."
The men in the room guffawed in laughter, while the women frowned or gave embarrassed smiles.
"If you try it, you'll just feel the sensation," David continued. "But an addict won't be able to stop."
It was a rainy Sunday afternoon at the addiction treatment center and recovery community of Yayasan Harapan Permata Hati Kita (Yakita) in Ciawi, Bogor, south of Jakarta. Parents had been visiting since 10 a.m. and, as usual, they gathered after lunch at Bhisma house to attend the aftercare meeting.
It's then that the barriers come down and parents ask the difficult questions they cannot ask of others. It's also an opportunity for them -- free of the burden of shame or the judgmental attitude of others -- to unload and share the strain of coping with an addicted child.
Most of all, parents learn from David and his wife Joyce, Yakita's directors, the right approach to helping their loved ones and the understanding that addiction is much more than the physical urge to get high.
"Addiction is an illness, and it will not go away just by detoxification," said Joyce.
While some institutions use medication to ease the painful withdrawal symptoms, Joyce believes this approach merely adds to the problems, for recovering addicts will eventually have to be weaned off those "helper" drugs -- a process that can take up to a year in itself.
"You can't do detoxification with intoxification," she said. At Yakita, addicts face up to the pain of withdrawal as they undergo a 12-step program with nothing stronger than tea and the solace of having people to talk to.
Detox cleanses the body, but the power of the mind and the craving for another high can be much harder to control.
Prio, 28, has been through the revolving door of detox centers for years, coming out of institutions only to slip up once he fell in with his old crowd.
"I was clean for a time, but then I got bored. Life without being high was no fun," he said.
The craving that addicts have to wrestle with each day is much harder once they are outside the protective confines of the center.
It's something that David knows only too well; an active addict for 15 years of his life, he admitted, "I fight the craving every single day".
His empathy and his willingness to talk frankly about his own past makes it easier for the addicts and their parents to open up about themselves.
"Armand," 32, has spent the last two years at Yakita, and has stayed clean on trips outside the treatment center.
Even now, however, cravings hit several times a day, his mother, "Nuni", said.
For Armand and his peers, the best approach to dealing with their addiction is to take one day at a time, repeating their own life mantra of, "Just for today".
"When Armand is battling it, I just ask him whether he wants me to stay by him," said Nuni, who is fondly called "Mami" (mom) by the patients at Yakita.
Other parents are not as calm in facing up to the situation.
"I wish I could talk to my mom when I crave drugs. But she always panics," said "Bayu", another recovering addict.
People who are "normal", who have never been addicts, would not understand what it feels like, said Bayu. "It's much easier to talk to addicts and accept their feedback."
Although recovery centers provide a safe refuge for healing, ultimately the addicts have to step back into the real world.
It's then that parents must practice tough love, a term referring to the approach of giving addicts what they need, not what they want.
"Dio", an addict who has been in and out of Yakita at least four times, said the motivation to overcome his addiction this time came from within him, boosted by his family's support and uncompromising attitude.
"I have a 22-month-old baby and I really need to clean up. My wife is really tough on me now. She always asks me precisely where I am going. You can't give freedom to addicts ... She stands by me and bears the hardship with me."
Some recovering addicts balk at the restrictions placed on them once they return to their families. Bayu had his cellular phone and car taken away, and was put on an allowance by his parents.
"Even when I was allowed to go out, I was forced to take a cellular phone and my mom would constantly call and nag me," he said.
Bayu relapsed three days after getting out of rehab by drinking alcohol with friends that his mom trusted because, "she knew they were not doing drugs".
Five days later he used putaw (low-grade heroin) with money from his girlfriend.
"Of course, she'll give me money when I ask, she loves me."
Choosing to mete out tough love to one's child is no easy task, which is why parents need support from others in the same situation. While the ultimate success of recovery hinges on the addict's willingness to change, it's that push in the right direction from their parents and loved ones that can make all the difference in staying clean.