This thing called drugs
Mo ti gba na! Mo ti elevate o !! (I am simply high, I feel intense pleasure), All I want is to get high!! Those are the music we are exposed to every day. It might seem like it is a norm as it something we hear daily but it doesn’t get personal until you have experienced it or seen someone you know have a breakdown from it.
Over the past year alone, nearly 15% of the adult population in Nigeria (around 14.3 million people) reported a “considerable level” of use of psychoactive drug substances — it’s a rate much higher than the 2016 global average of 5.6% among adults.; it is just numbers till you meet that one person, well that turned out to be my case.
I woke up to the noise of my aunt who claimed not to be doing aproko (poke nosing) to my grandma. “Labi has run mad,” she said “Isn’t that Debo’s friend, Yes! I was right to tell Debo to keep away” my grandma exclaimed. I was somewhat curious and worried about the whole debacle, my siblings knew the guy so it got personal for me. I was getting hurt that I had stayed at my grandma’s place for over seven years and I didn’t know a single kid on my street (I am that much of an introvert)
Curiosity got me asking questions such as; why would he choose to use drugs? How was he able to get access to the drugs? What is the role of the parents? There was no better person to ask than Debo, Boy was he glad to share the details with me; for that, I was grateful.
Labi is an Egun disadvantaged kid, whose parents gave him to an alhaji to help send him to school in exchange to be the old man’s carer but as a boy who just moved to a new place, it is expected to explore, if you aren’t too careful, you mix up with the wrong crowd.
Labi stopped attending school, He mixed up with the wrong crowd, all of a sudden gained interest in girls, and in a bid to meet up with their standard, he sought ways to make some quick money; drugs, he became a middle man soon enough, got initiated him into cultism.
Labi never kept the drugs with him because he uses; until seven days ago when he took a mixture of crack and cocaine. Having that mixture will make you disoriented as soon as his “guardians” discovered he took the drugs, they took the stack from him; he became aggressive.
“He hasn’t slept in 4 days, they won’t let him into the house,” Debo said. Labi became a hazard to the neighborhood and himself but it was too much of a risk to let him go (I expected, that the team who kept the drugs with him will want their drugs back or pay for the missing drugs or die). A prominent Alhaji had tried taken him to the hospital to seek medical aid but he refused, he got aggressive and so the good Samaritan had to let him go.
All we could do was watch and pray. “Lord, send a comforter to him and his family, keep him safe” my sister and I prayed. I found out he had no one, his parents were late. I was utterly thrown aback when I heard that, my heart broke further, smashing into granules.
I couldn’t hold the pain in so I shared it with a few friends, they opened up further of how they knew people who did it that, drugs were an escape route. One even opened up to me that he tried Rohypnol. I didn’t know what more to say because it seemed I was living in a cloud nine for all my life.
This time around, I could ask questions. His name is Olamide, a graduate of chemistry from the University of Lagos; “Everyone has different reasons for using these drugs” he says. He got introduced to Rohypnol by a friend who then gave him half a tablet to “try it out”, on the first trial he liked the fact that he slept. What might look like a trial, became a habit, situation in the house became dicey as the women his household suffered a miscarriage; A miscarriage in an African home can be superficial with a lot of blame surfaced on the woman. In addition to the fire in his home, his “girlfriend” whom he had thought was the one, duped- (the babe legit took his debit card and withdrew all his money) and cheated on; the devastation of it all made him seek comfort in Reff.
The relationship hit the rocks when the girl broke things off during his final year exams because of it he had an extra semester; the happenings deterred him from sleeping (insomnia), anxiety set in coupled with a broken heart. “I hate 2018 mehhn, I never won” He stated. He sought comfort in “reff” until he could get over the lady.
“You got lucky, that was some show of mental strength to stop it,” I said “One thing about drugs is, you have to be intelligent when doing it, that is the problem about these boys, they do drugs they don’t know when to leave- when to stop, they don’t even know why they are doing it” he justified “ They’re doing it because of peer pressure, I knew the reason I was doing it and I knew when to stop,” he added.
This thing called drugs saved a friend’s life and almost destroyed a neighbor’s. What do you think about this thing called drugs?
