Four young citizens, the oldest of whom is no more than 31 years old, decided to make an effort to help addicts get rid of this deadly scourge, after they themselves went through the bitter experience of addiction and recovered from it. Each of them carried the banner of volunteering, by joining the “Awnak” Center, affiliated with the Community Development Authority, and set out on their arduous journey to help addicts recover, and rehabilitate those recovering to return to life and live normally.
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New opportunity The four young men who participated in the meeting hoped that their voices would reach the relevant authorities in the country through “Emirates Today”, to give them a new opportunity by providing them with the required permits and identification papers, so that they can join the wheel of production and work. They said that they are prevented from entering some places to give a lecture, or to participate in an awareness seminar on the dangers of addiction, because they have not obtained approval from the competent authorities. |
However, they confirmed to Al-Emarat Al-Youm that this only came after each of them paid a heavy price in terms of their health, money, knowledge, work, family and social life, over the course of years, as the shortest of their four experiences lasted no less than eight years.
They said that there are three conditions without which quitting addiction cannot succeed: First, the will based on full awareness of the health and social risks of addiction. Second, creating a positive environment that ensures that they emerge from the harsh experience with the least possible losses. Third, securing conditions that allow them to regain their positions in the family and life, and to become productive people.
They added that after a long struggle with the disease, they concluded that the use of medical drugs to treat addiction is a major reason for not recovering, but rather a reason for falling into its trap more and more, noting that the tools for confronting and successfully confronting it require culture, knowledge and awareness of its details and secrets, stressing that addiction is a “malignant disease”, and the more you surrender to it, the more ferocious and deadly it becomes.
The young people, whom “Emarat Al Youm” met to listen to the details of their suffering and experience with the disease, warned that neglect, the absence of balanced supervision by parents, and family dispersion create the ideal environment for a son to drift towards addiction. In addition, the parents’ excessive concern and indulgence, or their cruelty and blind severity, are no less dangerous than absence and neglect, as they lead many young people to the same fate.
Their stories are very similar, as each of them lived long years of hopelessness, loss, and the dissolution of humanity in spirit and body. Suhail, for example, lived for years moving from one clinic to another, and from one hospital to another, but he only received huge amounts of medication, until he found relief in sedatives and sleeping pills, which he described as “legal drugs,” but he did not receive any healing help, according to him.
Suhail’s story with addiction began at an early stage, as he grew up in a family with a history of addiction, which doubled his suffering, as he remained surrounded for years by his addicted brothers and cousins. When he decided to recover from his addiction, which caused him a stroke and paralysis that confined him to a wheelchair for six months, not to mention his diabetes and hepatitis, he and his wife left the family home, to get away from his surroundings, and did not return to it until his brothers were imprisoned due to addiction.
Suhail, who spent 17 years trying to recover, said that using drugs as a means of treatment destroyed any hope he had of recovery, and turned him into a person completely devoid of will, except for the will to evade and deceive that he acquired in order to convince psychiatrists that he was sick and needed narcotic drugs.
He added that his experience with doctors, and his use of tricks and lies with them, made him an experienced advocate in legal arguments as well, to the point that he began to convince the judges themselves that he was sick and did not commit the crimes he was committing under the influence of drugs.
According to his account, he did not complete a full year outside of prison during the 17 years, as he was punished for various types of cases, including attempted murder, kidnapping, rape, and many other cases.
As for Jawad, he grew up alone, except for his grandmother who raised him and brought him up, without realizing the extent of the disaster he had fallen into. She thought that his addiction was just a mistake made by a teenager, and she did not know that it would take many years of his life.
Jawad, who spent his childhood and youth years without receiving any attention from his separated parents, was addicted for about 15 years, but – according to what he said – he did not know that he was sick until about seven months into his recovery journey, when he realized that he was sick and that he had to contain the disease and live a normal life.
Jawad began his recovery in 2010, while in prison, when he joined the “Step by Step” program. He continued training and treatment programs after his release, until he became one of the most prominent volunteer activists in convincing addicts, inside and outside penal institutions, of the importance of joining addiction rehabilitation programs and helping them recover.
Jawad confirms that he was in dire need of his father during the period in which he was swept away by drugs, and that he still needs him to this day, adding that those who took care of him beat him and punished him when they knew he was an addict, but they did not ask him about the reason for his addiction, and they did not try to find out from him how drugs swept him away, adding that if one of them had listened to his suffering, he would not have spent parts of his life – since he was fourteen – in prison, of which he spent seven consecutive years in prison in one case.
The young man miraculously escaped death when he once tried to break up a fight between two people who were fighting with knives. They started beating him up, and he was unable to fend them off because he was under the influence of drugs. As a result of his injury, he remained unable to move for seven months, in a very poor health condition, while doctors estimated that his survival rate did not exceed 2%.
Jawad did not know anything positive about himself, and he was certain that addiction creates strange personalities inside a person, all of which are abnormal and not in line with his humanity or his true nature.
He added that when he recovered and decided to devote his efforts to training and rehabilitation programs for recovering addicts, he began to learn from the program supervisors about the qualities and positives in his personality, such as commitment and mastery of the tasks assigned to him, which include giving lectures and training hours.
As for Khaldoun and Faisal, they are both in their early twenties and have been addicted for more than eight years, but neglect or negligence on the part of their parents was not the reason for their addiction.
Khaldoun explains that everything in his life circumstances, from family cohesion, excellent social relationships, educational performance, and school success, everything promised that he would be an important and successful person in society. However, his excessive self-confidence and love of experimentation – no matter the cost – pulled him into the current of drugs, which he mistakenly thought would not go beyond experimentation, until he began to postpone quitting them time and time again, and after a short time he turned into an addict.
Khaldoun lived years of misery, during which drugs showed their ugly faces to him, so Jawad and some friends set a “positive trap,” as they called it, to catch Khaldoun in the nets of recovery and regaining hope.
Jawad kept calling Khaldoun while he was in prison, to maintain a good relationship with him, and telling him about successful treatment programs, but he was not convinced or willing to recover. As soon as Khaldoun was released from prison, Jawad convinced him to visit him at his work, which was in fact a rehabilitation center. Khaldoun agreed, and asked Jawad to teach him ways to show the examiners that he was healthy and not using drugs, so that his secret would not be discovered when he took a dose of drugs. Jawad agreed to his request, but stressed to him that he should stop for a while, listen to some lectures, and join treatment programs to better understand how to deal with the examiners’ psychology. Thus, Khaldoun was attracted to treatment programs and began asking about numbers and statistics about the success stories of those recovering, until he gradually became involved in the treatment plan and began to recover.
As for Faisal, the youngest of them, he is still feeling his way to salvation, as he stopped using drugs for several months, then suffered a relapse that is considered a normal thing in the stages of recovery, after which the addict returns stronger and more able to resist, because a relapse (i.e. using the drug again) does not make the addict feel pleasure, but rather burdens him with a heavy feeling of guilt and oppression.
Faisal stressed that he is more determined than ever to recover, after realizing that addiction is a disease resulting from a deviation in thinking, and that there is no way to confront it and get rid of it except with reason, will, and following specialized behavioral, athletic, and psychological programs.
