An Addict, Alive and in Recovery

If President Duterte were elected 10 years ago, I’d be dead by now.

The local police would have asked me and my trusted “source” to stop using shabu, but I wouldn’t have stopped. Neither would my favorite source, who was just as hooked as I was. He was a childhood friend and, believe it or not, the evils of drugs and the drug trade did not destroy our friendship.

You see, that's the thing. We’d probably turn ourselves in to the authorities and sign what they wanted us to sign out of fear for our lives – just as the hundreds of thousands of “surrenderees” are doing now.  But once the craving or “giyang” sets in, we would have found ways to get our fix. We were intelligent and creative enough to find means, however dire the situation would seem. As I would later learn, addiction is a complex disease – and not merely a series of bad choices or bad behaviors – and our addiction (or at least my addiction, as I can only speak for myself), had established a firm hold on us. Rationality and fear would not have sufficed to make me stop and “change."

Despite our fears and the dangers that faced us, we would have still “scored” from our most secret of sources, because we were “connected” well enough to the higher-ups in our province's drug trade. I can only imagine how easy it would have been for me to become a recipient of the currently prevailing “cardboard justice.” It wouldn't have mattered who killed me or why. The possibilities were countless.

But instead of marking me off a hitlist, our local police coordinated with my rehab center's director, and assisted them when they picked me up from our small town and brought me to rehab. I did not resist or attempt to run or fight. But even if I did, I don’t think they would have shot me dead.

I can still vividly recall how it happened. It was like a scene straight out of a movie: everything came to a standstill at our local market as people watched our Deputy Chief escort me to the precinct, where my wife and my mother – who seemed to have betrayed me – signed the commitment papers and turned me over to rehab.

Because the police back then were mindful of the guidelines they had to follow while performing their drug-related duties – even after I’ve had several run-ins with the law and sleepovers at our local prison – I had a chance to recover. My relatives, my wife, my mother, and my friends – who still believed in me and in the possibility of change and recovery – pulled in all the love, support, and resources I needed to bring me where I am now: a recovering alcoholic-addict; a functioning, productive member of society; a devoted husband and father; and a gainfully employed IT professional.

But as happy as I am that I am in recovery, I am saddened and alarmed by what is happening right now. I can only reiterate that for an addict, getting away from addiction is not as simple as deciding to stop. It has been a decade-long struggle for me, and I am still struggling to stay clean and sober, one day at a time.

I am recovering. But to recover, one has to be alive.