By Vanessa Cort
LAST Monday evening I attended a small celebration to mark my friend Andre Wiltshire’s 20th  drug-free year. As we chatted about what he termed the “insanity” of crack-cocaine use, Andre, an accomplished dramatist and actor, said that now he just feels “high on life” and the fact that he can “get up every morning reasonably healthy.”

He recalled how, at the height of his drug use, he had to flee Georgetown for fear of being beaten up by a ‘pusher man’ whose drugs he was selling on a block.

“They, [the buyers] always wanted something bigger… and while I was looking, they were helping themselves.” The result was that the money was ‘short’ and Andre, who was held responsible, faced the threat of a thorough beating if he could not make the money ‘right.’

“So I headed for Berbice,” he said with dry humour, remembering how he lived with friends, who also smoked “crack” and who had a pusher-man “cutting up drugs at their house.”

He was able to live ‘under the radar in Berbice, because the Internet was not as well established as it is today, and ended up working with a security firm, spending all of his earnings on “crack.”

Before going to Berbice, Andre, who was well-known for his sterling portrayals of leading political figures in the popular Link shows, was fired by a private school where he worked on drama projects.

While there he observed the students’ involvement with drugs and alcohol and began to weave the plot of his plays around this. The school did not want this kind of exposure so, “they let me go”, Andre recalled, immediately turning our talk to the impact of drug use in our society and the need for ongoing drug education in our schools.

Since then the problem has grown.

As its use spread, crack-cocaine impacts the wider society, leading to petty crime, prostitution, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and an increase in homelessness.
While there are facilities such as the Salvation Army Men’s Rehabilitation Centre and the Phoenix Recovery Project where abusers can ‘come off’ the drug in a safe environment, the majority are still ‘out there.’

Many are reluctant to seek help or are unwilling to admit they even have a problem because of the tremendous stigma attached to drug use and the prohibitive cost of treatment.
While back in 2008 several initiatives were launched by the Ministry of Health to help combat drug abuse, many have ‘fallen by the wayside’ and need to be revitalised.

No longer can we as a society continue to view drug use as of no concern to us, when it clearly has far-reaching repercussions. And no longer can we continue to shun those with substance use disorders (SUDs), content to call them ‘Junkies’ and ‘put them in a box.’

It is time for us to acknowledge that drug use in our society affects us all.