Small's story

 Small passed away in April (exact date unknown) 2017 of heart failure. I will always remember him for his cheerfulness in adversity and his beautiful spirit. He leaves a hole in my heart.

Small is a young man living and begging on the streets of Scottburgh. This is his story, transcribed and adapted from an interview.  Small is his nick name and the name by which he was known to his friends.

I was born in Braemar and stayed there with my granny and aunty, I didn’t know my father. He was locked up when for killing someone when I was six months old. My mother chose to live in Umzinto selling fruit, bananas , ice-cream on the street. She couldn’t afford the daily taxi back to Braemar. My aunty used to hit me because I never helped my sisters with the work around the house. One day when she hit me I fell and cracked a bone. My mother took me to stay in Umzinto. I was 9 years old and in std.2.

One day I saw a man in the taxi rank smoking zol (dagga). I wanted to try it, so I begged for the money and went to buy some. I went to the bush to smoke it. I was not drinking smoking, even gwaais (cigarettes) at the time. It is first time I did anything like that. I got goefed.(high) I also got hungry. I went home and finished all the food. It was a nice feeling. I felt like I’m right now. I can enjoy my day, I can forget all my problems, I can sleep at night. So I smoked again, the next day and the next. There was no-one to stop me. When my mother was not working she was drinking. She would get very drunk and hit me for nothing.

After about 4 months I found four older friends who were smoking  zol and I joined up with them every day. The oldest was 19. I was then 10 years old. I was still going to school at that time, but we would meet every day after school, and sometimes we would meet during school and smoke.

I like school and did the work. I passed std 2 , 3 and 4 even when I was smoking. I stayed in school till I was eleven. After I left school my principal would see me in the road. He would ask me, what are you doing here?  You are clever you should be in school.

Then one day my friend came with whoonga (cheap heroin). He told us he found it on the floor. He showed us how to smoke. I had never heard of it. I didn’t know it was dangerous. He came again the next day, and the next. He told us he was stealing it. The whoonga goef  is stronger than the zol. It is too nice, it make you want to feel like that all the time. During the school holidays we started to smoke it all day.

Then one day he came with nothing. He told us he couldn’t get any. I couldn’t sleep that night. I suffered my first rosta (withdrawal sickness). For a whole week we didn’t smoke. I couldn’t sleep. I was shaking, feeling hot, feeling cold, even my bones were sore. It felt like someone was choking me.  At first I did not know why I was feeling like that. So I asked the guy who was bringing it. He told me it is a rosta and you get it from smoking whoonga. I asked him what I must do to stop it. He told me the only thing I can do to feel right is to smoke more whoonga. This was when I left school and started to panta (beg) everyday. I needed to smoke to keep the pain away. This was more important than school. I told people I was hungry, I needed money for food, they felt sorry for me and gave me money, food, clothes. I used the money to buy whoonga.

During this time my mother moved to Dududu with her new husband. I have not seen her or heard from her in 3 years. My father came out of jail and I met him a couple of times. He moved to the Eastern Cape, so I do not know where my parents are. My sister came from Braemar to look after me, and for a while I stayed with her. Then I started going to Scottburgh because the people there give more money.

For three years now I am here on the streets in Scottburgh. Every night I must find a place to sleep : sometimes it is an empty house, sometimes by the beach, sometimes under a bush. Sometimes I am by myself , sometimes I join with other guys. I panta everyday. I don’t like to be like this, but there is nothing I can do because I need to smoke. People don’t like us because they say we steal. I never steal. I get enough money from the panta. I get around R100 a day sometimes R150 even R200. The other day I picked up R50. Sometimes I do small jobs. I wash cars, shop windows, push trolleys. I like to work, I do not feel good to ask for money for nothing.  I was arrested one time by the police. They caught me with one straw of whoonga. They took me to the cells and then to the court. I told the judge I have a problem I need help; I want to go to rehab. He just gave me a warning  and sent me out. They could’t help, they sent me back to the street.

Many people are kind, they have a good heart. They and give me money and food. But if I get money I use it to smoke so it is not really helping. Nobody is ever coming and saying why is it you are on the streets  and trying to help me stop whoonga or get off the streets. It is the first time now that I am starting to join the NA ( narcotics Anonymous ) meetings. It is only NA that is trying to help me.

 I am tired for this thing, I want to leave it. I am smoking for eight years. Now when I smoke it  is not making me to feel good. I am just feeling sad. I want to go back to school or to get a job and to help my sister. Please I am asking for help. If you can help I will appreciate, I won’t forget. I’m liking to go to NA meeting, I am enjoying that hour ... I am learning about drugs. If I can get clean I can go to help the other addicts, to go to the  schools to tell other children the drugs is dangerous. No-one is telling me that. I want to teach other children before so they don’t start to use. 

‘Pathways to recovery from heroin addiction: An oral history account of problematic drug users in recovery on the KZN South Coast’

The aim of the thesis is to investigate pathways into addiction and subsequent recovery through the experience of  problematic  drug users engaging in a process of recovery. The stories of these individuals’ experience will be told through a series of oral histories. A secondary aim is to critically engage with the various debates about addiction and recovery in the existing literature, particularly relating to current treatment models, and to contribute to theoretical and evidential debates. This study will be guided by a qualitative research design. The primary research tool that will be used is oral histories, which will be analysed, through narrative analysis, to uncover common themes in the stories of the problematic drug users.

The focus of the study will be a group of  addicted heroin  users living in Umdoni on the Natal South Coast, mainly , but not exclusively from Umzinto. This is a poor community that has in recent years been particularly hard hit by problematic drug use, particularly heroin use. This group has been chosen purposively as it comprises of addicted drug users who are actively seeking, and involved in recovery through participation the twelve step program of Narcotics Anonymous. Some members of this selected group have been ‘clean’  (abstinent from all drugs and alcohol) for varying a mounts of time, while others are still using drugs , but engaging with the program and expressing  a desire  to get ‘clean’. The interviewees will come from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, many reduced to homelessness, others in more affluent conditions where they are dependent on family, or even self-supporting.  The oral history stories of 15 of these individuals will be conducted over a period of 12 months. Each participant will be interviewed twice, allowing them to tell their stories, as a continuum at two points in time. This is important because the process of recover from problematic drug use is precarious, and the aim of the study is to find out what pathways and interventions appear to be most successful in leading to longer and more sustainable recovery outcomes.

My motivation for doing this research stem from my own long-term experience as an  addicted drug user. It is also driven by a more academic interest in the literature on the recovery of  problematic  drug users and on the various academic and practical debates about ‘rehabilitation’ and how one understands the reasons for problematic drug use in the first place.

Worldwide there is growing criticism of the present approach to the international drug problem. This is best demonstrated by the recent Special UN Assembly which was called to look at alternative ways to address this problem. The traditional discourse on the subject focuses on two models; the  judicial and the medical. The first conceptualises the addicted  drug user as a criminal who needs to be punished or even removed from society. The second conceptualises the user as a patient in need of medical intervention.

A third way, the social model, as conceived by writers in the recovery movement, view addicts as vulnerable and alienated members of society in need of re-integration into the community. The proponents of this model  are split into two camps, labelled harm reduction and recovery,  often seen as hostile and mutually exclusive.  My  personal interest is in the  recovery movement  which locates the causes and resolution of problematic drug use firmly within a community context. I will also, however be exploring commonality between the harm reduction and recovery camps, which I believe is greater than the differences between them, and hope to identify and draw on the strengths of both approaches.  The recovery movement focuses on  involving recovering addicted drug users, and those affected by addiction (families and communities) in the healing process and the reintegration of problematic drug users back into their communities. William White and other writers in the recovery tradition have claimed that entire communities have  been victims of what they call “historical trauma”. Such communities, where disconnection and disadvantage is predominant, become particularly vulnerable to a wide spectrum of personal and social problems. Trauma erodes indigenous sources of cultural and personal resilience leaving communities, community institutions, neighbourhoods, families, and individuals particularly vulnerable to drug and alcohol related problems. Anne Wilson Schaeff puts it slightly differently when she argues that problematic drug use is rooted in a  society that suffers from a state of  dis-ease, rooted in alienation, in which the individual addicted drug user  is but  the symptom and carries the burden of suffering.

This movement has come to the fore in the USA where a strong network of Community Recovery organisations has emerged. These are embedded in communities through establishing recovery community Centres. The movement is also engaged in advocacy, education and research and a strong body of academic writing is emerging. It is however not widely  acknowledged in this country, where the predominant approaches are still located within the judicial and medical paradigms. In my view, the rationale of the recovery movement in terms of the underlying causes of problematic drug use (and how to deal with it) is of great relevance in the South African context where community trauma – both current and historical – is deeply embedded.  

Through my own experience, contact with other recovering drug users, and reviewing the literature I have tentatively identified the three main limitations of the current treatment approach that are most apparent. These are the inaccessibility of treatment to the vast majority of problematic drug users; the discord between the perception that problematic drug users can and should be cured by a single intervention and the reality of the chronic and recurring nature of the disease; and thirdly the focus on the individual which overlooks the community and social aspects of the problem.

The voices of problematic drug users in various stages of recovery are without doubt the most appropriate place to begin in making sense of best practice models for promoting recovery and the reduction of harms that problematic drug use creates to individuals, their families and the community.

Through the oral history stories told by drug users at various stages of recovery, as well as through a thorough investigation of the recovery movement and its relationship with other ‘treatment’ models, I hope to feed into policy debates and discussions around treatment of addiction, all of which are in a very transient stage in South Africa.

The purpose of the study is that the insight  gained may be used to identify and begin to address limitations within the present treatment models. The primary question  I will  be asking is : “What insight can we gain from the life  experience of addicted heroin users, as revealed through their oral histories, that might assist in identifying and addressing the limitations of present  treatment  models in South Africa and internationally?”  The secondary questions I will focus on include:      What is the connection between community vulnerability and what White calls historical trauma and individual addiction?  What role does time in formal treatment (rehab) play in recovery?   What role does spirituality (or connectedness ) play in recovery?   What role can recovering addicts (wounded healers)  play in recover?

Researching  problematic drug users is not always easy to do, particularly those who have been victimised by police and marginalised by their own families and communities. The possibilities for gaining access to, and the trust of  these participants, and to uncovering the stories that lie behind their drug use and their routes to recovery will, I believe, be greatly facilitated by my own personal history as a long term addicted drug user, as well as my ongoing  work  with homeless addicts. The shared experience of  problematic drug use, combined with a growing academic interest in recovery processes will, I believe, allow for research outcomes that have depth and validity.