Starting Our Life with Drugs

There is a common misconception in the Maldives that drug addicts come from poor broken families, that we are uneducated or were ill-treated as children. We nod quickly when we are asked these questions but in truth that’s just us manipulating you. Even though our education was limited - we are master manipulators and it is easier for us to blame someone else for our mistakes. We have even manipulated the professionals into sending us back home from rehab so that we can use again.

We get sympathy from you when we tell you that our drug addiction is a result of our traumatic childhood. We pose as uneducated people but within this group of recovering addicts most of us had completed our secondary education. We come from middle class families and there are even some of us who come from rich families. We have held prestigious jobs, become addicted and lost it all. A few of us have had parents and uncles who were also addicted to drugs and almost all of us have parents who were respected in the society. But, not all of us were neglected as children. So the next time you ask a person on the street this question, think twice. You know better than to be fooled now.

“My father used to take me to school every morning. I just walk into school and as soon as he leaves I walk back out again and go to my boyfriend’s house. I stay with him and have a good time until I have to go back to school. My father will come pick me up again but he had no idea what was going on” (FS, female addict, 17 years old).

We weren’t born or brought up as addicts and nobody wanted to become an addict. We never said: “I want to be a drug addict and ruin my life and lives of my loved ones”. We did however want to be the centre of attention. Our insecurities play a big part in this. We feel unworthy and we would do anything to get noticed and be a part of the ‘cool’ groups in our schools and neighbourhoods. We didn’t know very much about society and we knew nothing about drugs. We were just doing what the others were doing. We grew up looking for acceptance from society and we wanted to fit in. We enjoyed that initial high so much that every shot we did after that was to experience that first high again.

We didn’t become addicts in a day. There are people who try drugs and stop because they don’t like the high, the kick or the feel of it. We were different; we loved how it made us feel. It gave us the power to perform well in everything. We didn’t see what the drug was doing to us; we only knew that we felt great using it. But soon enough, we couldn’t get that kick anymore. Our world revolved around our drugs and our next fix. We lived in fear and guilt because what we were doing was against the law. The initial euphoria and excitement had worn off a long time ago. Now we were dependent on the drugs. We needed it to get through everyday. It is the tolerance we had to the drugs that made us abusers and addicts.