The question arises, why did I start? One reason is a deep longing for acceptance and fulfilment. No one gets out of bed one day and says “Today I’m gonna try drugs and become an addict”. We are all influenced in some way. Peer pressure is a daunting reality.

In my life drugs followed a sequence: cigarettes, alcohol, dagga, inhalants, mandrax, LSD, and later ecstasy, speed, cocaine. Maybe it’s an older brother or friend in the neighbourhood, or a group of kids you want to be part of. Remember that kids are formed by what they see and hear, yes, the music world and television. Was it not for the fact that I first fell in love with Reggae music, I would probably not have smoked Dagga. All kids look for attention and long for approval. Especially nowadays where parents are so busy climbing the corporate ladder that they don’t really care for their own children the way they should. They think that more pocket money will satisfy them. And that is becoming more common, parents who drop their kids off at the mall with a few hundred Rand, no wonder the dealers are targeting those places!

So I became a smoker, and later smoked Dagga several times a day, even at school. I gave up on sport and any desire to make something of my life. The strange thing is that my parents were stable, hard working people. I never had a drunken father who beat me or a mother who didn’t care, but I became worse and ended up in a dreadful state. All the drugs that I got involved with were mainly for the fun and because I wanted to be cool. I enjoyed taking drugs, but drugs and the way it affects us don’t care how we feel or what we think. It just follows its path of destruction.

In later years I got involved in the Rave or Clubbing scene. Then I was much older and experienced, but still there was that lust and desire for acceptance and desire to have fun. I went to a night club with friends and took Ecstasy. They knew what it was all about, but for me it was a complete new world that opened up. From that night I became like a hungry wolf. It drove me and pulled me in such a way that eventually every weekend I had to get some and party. I don’t know how many E’s I took, but one thing that I do know is that today I bear the consequences. Studies on both humans and animals have proven that regular use of ecstasy produces long-lasting, perhaps permanent damage to the brain’s ability to think and store memories. It actually changes the brain’s structure! Even though I have been off drugs for several years, I have a tremendous problem with my memory and it could remain till I die. But that’s not all...

After I ended up at hospital one night, because of mixing drugs (ecstasy, cocaine and alcohol), my body called a halt! It was “time up” for me, I just couldn’t continue. Every time I tried drugs after that, it was dreadful. In a way my life was saved, but for the months ahead, there was nothing but depression, cravings, despair, fear, confusion, sleeplessness and absolute horror. It is only by the grace of God that I didn’t end up in a body bag.

One night, over a year after the hospital nightmare, I had a meeting with God. He changed everything. It was as if He came and gave me that acceptance that I longed for. My soul was finally satisfied by His endless love for me. In many ways I still bear the consequences of my past, but it reminds me, and others of what drugs can do. Even though this is so, through Jesus Christ, God not only forgave me the sin of addiction, but He has set me free. I am now recovered and cured!