A FORMER addict appealed to me after reading a previous piece that I did in this column. He was irate that from his view, the government was not doing anything to terminate the drug blocks; that the drug blocks are still in place since 2015, and that people are even now renting real estate to open new drug blocks as if its real business. He not too long ago came out of rehab and is fired with the urgency for a justified crusade. It took some time and heated debate to access a reasonable balance in our conversation. I was patient and did my best to engage what was bent towards an active argument because I understand how he feels.

The grim reality is that if a drug block is closed down, the addicts will not be liberated. If the real estate that the block is on is retained legally, they will drift off to other locations, and if all the known locations are closed down, the addict will move to individuals. Few have witnessed a 3 am morning in the Bourda Market location and parameters, about drug-pushing. A drug pusher I have known well across decades, told me about phone orders and home-delivery services she has conducted and some impressive names came up. We– me and my former addict colleague– had begun to reason on a more realistic and practical level. The worst epidemic now facing us, we concluded, are pills, ecstasy, “molly”, spice, and several other names for dangerous chemical cocaine-based concoctions offered to schoolchildren, in and out of our townships, and the chemical ‘Frankenstein’ lab, synthetic marijuana.

I explained to him that even though I’m not rich and economic hopelessness is the strong argument presented for ‘Tekking a chance,’ I rejected the narco trade because of the realisation that most Guyanese are poor, barely making ends meet, with a bold and vain effort to maintain a public show. And drugs have caused untold suffering on families, torn siblings apart, broken up families and have caused too many murders, especially of elderly parental figures who were unable to finance drug habits. I know a handful of people who have turned away from running drug blocks because they couldn’t stand the degradation and loss of manhood and humanity imposed on addicts.

In a Charlotte Street drug yard, a school friend of mine was reduced to washing the underwear of the “Mistress of the Block” after he could no longer earn to feed his malevolent habit. The last time I saw him alive he was crunched on the North Road and Camp Street bridge where the Mr Mod shop used to be, shivering on a relatively hot day. His last words to me repeated a question that ‘Chase,’ a former policeman cast down to the level of addict, who with others washed cars and motorbikes in front of the then Silvie’s Store on Hadfield and High Streets back in the early 90s; and I have no idea what happened to him except the memory of the question, “ Yuh ent know anybody that could do anything fuh we/me?”

The only sensible and workable approach is to remove the current population of addicts to a colony outside of any township environment, where an existing project is activated. I’m talking about the physical work of road development, aircraft runaway or construction of camp administration buildings. By now we should have the substance abuse formula to manage the withdrawals. I have witnessed that physical involvement tasks that result in earning, that contribute to an open mind for esteem engagement, possibly towards a direction of challenge and purpose. Drug addiction is a complex condition driven by hopelessness and humbling situations, where a metamorphosis into the reality of present circumstances as a result of accepting previous actions is rejected.

I spoke to addicts, who concoct blame scenarios that are incredible but logical fictions. Even those you have known from childhood rely on some external alter ego experience to explain why they engaged in drugs. My concern is that people lie all the time, some, however, do accept self-blame, but seem to lack the mental resolve to process redemption. I knew people who have lied so much that they begin to believe the fictions as true, completely in defiance of the public who knows the truth. One such character is a politician who has time and time again failed to be loyal to his own utterances, yet proceeds anyhow.

I cannot understand with all the evidence of the devastation of mind-altering drugs, one would venture into a foul-smelling place of sprawling human decadence to become a part of it? I have read of no clear answer by any professional that explains the phenomenon in this area of self-inflicted misery, especially with adults. With the young, peer and personality pressures can envelop, as it does with sexual, criminal and defiance of one’s better judgement into a miserable memory later, of a regrettable submission, but not at the time.
That there are humans incapable of empathy, who will use office to empower themselves at the expense of others, masquerade well in any momentary guise you expect of them, they do exist. The medical world calls them psychopaths; they are wired differently, soulless, not driven by a life evolved in the “crab barrel.” They never knew hunger, yet they crave ‘presence’ ‘wealth’ ‘power’ and homage if the drug world is a means to that end. Then its misery, casualties and poisonous social impact are insignificant, to be trivialised, as a means to an insincere end, the definition of human evil in high places.