An addict’s story

As a child, I remember watching the popular tele-serial ‘Chunauti’ on Doordarshan with rapt attention trying to figure out why young college boys were injecting stuff into their bodies and shuddered to see them whine in pain when they did not get the drug they were addicted to. I didn’t understand the serial much at that point in time.
I could never understand what pushed people to drugs and, honestly, I couldn’t care less. But, yesterday, when I came face to face with an addict, I found myself wanting… I lacked the understanding or perhaps suffered from `disinterest’ in an issue that didn’t affect me.
His story, however, made me discover the dark side of the world I am living in and put me in an awkward situation as well, as I didn’t know how to respond to his desperation to end his life.
“Curiosity killed the cat” he said at least five times in the one hour that I spent with him. He said the saying applied to his life, literally.
The man, in his mid-30s started doing drugs about 16 years ago “out of curiosity” when he had just joined college and ended up in a situation where he tried killing himself three times. He showed me a deep gashes on his neck from his first suicide attempt, slash marks on his wrist were proof of his second bid to end his life. He was telling me about his third attempt when I asked him to spare me the details.
The life he had lived over the last 16 years that he narrated calmly with remarkable honesty made me think of the `dark world’ that coexists with this regular world that I live in. People in the dark world do not socialize with those outside their circuit. The sun shies brighter on the other side, the man said, but narrated how he would lock himself up in a room for days together if he was unable to get his daily dose of one gram heroine.
“I would turn to alcohol then, finishing off two bottles of vodka or whisky everyday. But alcohol could never give me the same kick.”
He had friends who did drugs with him. Two of them died in front of him. “I was shaken, but still did not quit,” he said.
He said he took pride in the fact that he maintained friendships with a couple of `normal’ boys. “I would look at them and wonder how I reached this stage. I wanted to be like them, but even when I was hanging out with the regular bunch, I had to take my daily dose to keep me sane.”
From a rich family and pursuing medicine, the man had lost touch with his family and would take up odd jobs to buy his daily drug dose. “I have worked in food stalls, sold fish in the market, only to make enough money to buy the drug,” he said, his hands still shaking from years of abuse.
Now in rehab, the man said that he never thought he would ever get back to a normal society with normal people. Then he said how he felt terrible for having wasted so many years of his life but was glad that he didn’t get married. And then he paused, collected himself and said he was ashamed of himself and the life he had wasted. He had nothing to look forward to in life.
Since he is in rehab, I hoped he would have more to look forward to in life. I could not give him much hope, smiled at him, said all will be fine and walked out. On hindsight I think I could have wished him luck.