Dr. Rahim Shirazi has everything in control, he has been clean for more than a three years, but it hasn’t always been like this. He has had more than eight episodes of coming clean after rehab, only to relapse back into addiction.
Dr. Shirazi narrates his story of an alcohol and drugs problem that started 36 years ago in Yugoslavia. He is what you would call a late bloomer because unlike many addicts who pick up drugs and alcohol in their teenage years, mostly due to peer pressure, Shirazi started drinking at 30.
The medical doctor was trained in Russia. “It was during Amin’s time of tyranny and our father was advised to send us abroad for education because we would be safer there,” he narrates.
“Actually I had got a scholarship to Australia, but Amin stopped the scholarships we had got and gave them to his people. I got another scholarship to study medicine in Russia and off I went,” he narrates.
Despite the fact that Russia is known for its vodka, the young Shirazi didn’t pick up the habit there, even with the biting cold that sends many people seeking solace and warmth in the bottle. As a Muslim, alcohol was just not his thing.
“After university, I got a job in neighboring Yugoslavia. My elder brother, also a medical doctor was already there, so I joined him. It is here that I took to alcohol because I was bored in the evenings and the only pastime in the villages was drinking alcohol,” Dr. Shirazi narrates the genesis of the habit that was later to lead a life of highs (intoxication) and lows (negative effects) on his life.
He had moved to Yugoslavia with his Russian wife, but she had to compete for attention with his alcohol and she lost miserably, leaving him and returned to her
native country.
East or west, home is best. Shirazi soon got tired of Yugoslavia and by this time the Amin regime was falling, so there was East or west, home is best. Shirazi soon got tired of Yugoslavia and by this time the Amin regime was falling, so there was a desire for Ugandans in the Eastern Europe countries to return home.
“We realized Uganda was not yet safe enough for us, so we went to Kenya where our medical services were in demand, and I ended up in Mombasa,” he says.
Life in Mombasa was good as he had a well-paying job. Soon he had two cars including a monster Ford car that made the young doctor the envy of many. Mombasa being a tourist coastal town with a vibrant nightlife, Dr. Shirazi was sucked in and he continued his alcoholism habit that he had picked up in Yugoslavia
Prescription Drugs Set In
What was to really waste Dr. Shirazi’s life away was not alcohol, but prescription drugs, which as a medical doctor he was very conversant with. And it is not that he went looking out for them. Rather, they found him, but being in the medical field, he was assured of constant supply.
After an accident where his finger was to be operated upon, he was given an injection that soothed his pain, but was to do more harm than good and cause more pain to him and his family in the long run. It was a pethidine injection, an opiate pain killer with similar effects on the human being as opium.
“I liked the feeling that pethidine gave me. So even after I got healed, I continued taking pethidine because of the high it gave me. Pethidine is a controlled drug, but because I was a doctor, it was not difficult to come by for me,” he says.
“I would prescribe it for patients, just for my own use. And a doctor is not supposed to inject patients, that’s a nurse’s job, but I would do it to get my hands on pethidine. I would actually prescribe 100mg of pethidine for a patient, but I would inject them with 50ml and keep the 50mg for myself. I would do that a few times a day, until I would get high,” he confesses.
It was not long before Dr. Shirazi added codeine tablets to the pethidine and alcohol cocktail. “I wanted to get high and as a doctor, I knew well how to dispense this medicine to myself. Codeine tablets are a synthetic opiate with the same effect as Pethidine, so in absence of one, I would take another, or even both,” he says.
Returning To Uganda
After President Yoweri Museveni took power in 1986, Ibrahim felt it was safe enough to return to Uganda. Despite his risky lifestyle in Nairobi, the drugs had not yet destroyed him and he was still very much in control – or so he thought. He returned with $30,000 (presently valued at about Shs100m) and set up a clinic in downtown Kampala.
“Now, because I had my own clinic, it was very easy for me to access pethidine and codeine from the pharmacies. You know that to access medicine from a pharmacy, especially restricted drugs like those ones, they need prescription from a doctor. Remember I was already a doctor so it was very easy for me. In fact after a while, no questions were asked by the pharmacists.”
By this time, Ibrahim was a family man, married to a beautiful Ugandan wife who gave him two daughters. But unlike his past single days, the drugs were to cause a rift in his family. His cocktail of alcohol and prescription drugs started taking its toll on him.
“I was a very athletic guy with a heavily built body. In fact my wife used to call me Incredible Hulk. But my body wasted away and I became a pack of bones, weighing about 60kgs,” he says.
His older brother, an a surgeon who was running a medical center after his return to Uganda intervened because he knew exactly what Dr. Shirazi’s problem was. The older brother had converted to a born again Christian from his Muslim faith and he asked his brother to do so. He linked him to a pastor’s son who had recovered from alcoholism to fellowship together.
“I became a born again Christian, thinking that Jesus would take care of my problem. I didn’t know that I had to put in effort myself, so becoming born again didn’t help much. In fact it only made things worse because my clinic was located in Old Kampala, which is a predominantly Muslim area. Many Somalis and other Muslims who live around the area were my biggest clientele base and when they heard that I had become born again, they abandoned my clinic and the business collapsed,” he recalls.
His wife got fed up and was on the verge of leaving him. From a staunch Muslim family, she hadn’t reconciled with the fact that her husband had become born again, let alone his alcoholism and failure to take care of his family. And then a miracle happened.
“One of my daughters was down with pneumonia and we thought we were going to lose her. One of my born again friends asked
to call in some prayer warriors from Kampala Pentecostal Church (now Watoto church). We prayed all night and in the wee hours of the morning, my daughter who was almost dying walked from her bed. It was a miracle that saved my marriage because my wife became born again after that and two weeks later, my young daughters also asked to become born again.”
Probably the wife also thought that Jesus would also take care of the alcohol problem, but this was not to happen.
After the collapse of his practice, Dr. Shirazi’s brother took him in at his clinic as a general practitioner
“I was under his constant watch, but even he couldn’t keep up as he would on many occasions find me high,” he recalls.
Big brother realized that Dr. Shirazi needed more help and booked him into a rehab. After the 28 days in rehab, the big brother knew that the safest place to keep him away from drugs was to keep him off his medical profession, so he advised that he stays home till he was sure he had kicked the habit
“The family wondered how I kept getting high even with no alcohol or medicine in the house. Remember I am a doctor with a chemistry background, so I had started brewing my alcohol right at home. I used to use bread and yeast, put them in a small jerrycan with water and a week later it would have fermented into alcohol,” he narrates.
“Unfortunately, you cannot hide your tracks for long. My ‘brewery’ was in the garage, so I had taken to washing the car everyday, just to take some swigs of my alcohol. Soon they found out and I was taken back to rehab, so that had to stop.
Job Hoping
After rehab, Dr. Shirazi went through a series of medical jobs and he was fired from all of them, just because in a hospital with drugs, he was like a kid with an open cookie jar.
“I got a UN job in Eritrea. At that time I was clean and focused on my practice, but unfortunately the bar in the staff quarters was next to my house. It was like a magnet pulling me. I went in a few times and stuck to soft drinks, but there were these Ugandan and Kenyan soldiers who used to patronize it and became my friends. They convinced me to take just one or two, after all the UN met the bar bills. Soon I was drinking like a fish and you know I had discovered that only a combination of drugs and alcohol would make me high so I got back into the cycle,” he says.
“Sixteen codeine tablets at a go could kill a horse, but I had become so resistant to the drugs because of overuse that I sometimes took 10 to 16 tablets to get knocked.”
It was discovered that he was using drugs and he was put on the next plane to Uganda. It wasn’t long before he got another job at Gulu Independent Hospital.
“One time I passed out in the staff quarters after I had lit a hot plate (cooker) to prepare my supper. The shirt fell on the hot plate and a fire broke out. Fortunately my neighbors saw smoke and they broke in and saved me. I didn’t know what was happening because I had passed out. I was taken to the hospital and was put on water drip because the other doctors knew my problem. When I woke up, our Mzungu boss put me on the next bus to Kampala.”
Next stop was a Kampala hospital where he was unfortunately put in charge of the pharmacy. “I realized the pharmacist was selling off drugs including pethidine and codeine. So instead of apprehending him I told him I would keep his secret as long as he kept supplying me with pethidine and codeine. After passing out on the job, he was dismissed.
He landed a job with another Kampala hospital. “For some reason I used to ace the interviews because of my seniority. I knew my medical stuff and always came out on top during interviews.” At this hospital, he was put in charge of seeing senior citizen patients who were not comfortable being attended to by young doctors. “One time I got drowsy and passed out while seeing a judge. He complained and I was dismissed,” Dr. Ibrahim says.
All his jobs were punctuated by visits to rehab centers. He would get clean, only to go back to a hospital environment and get tempted again. “I have been booked to Butabika hospital four times. One time my family found me loitering bare footed in town. I had gone cuckoos after getting high,” he laughs off the incident.
Another hair rising experience was when he passed out behind the wheel, and veered off the road near Old Kampala Police station, ramming into the Police station, ramming into a building. By coincidence, his, wife who was driving home saw his car and came to the rescue. Luckily they had sustained no injuries and it was just his usual problem of passing out.
After rehab, he got yet another job at a private hospital in Nsambya. This was another bad episode.
“The hospital is near Kabalagala (considered Uganda’s sin city) which is littered with bars and pharmacies that never ask for prescription. As long as you have money, you get the drugs,” he says. The M.D could not keep up with a doctor who was always high
and advised that he goes back to rehab.
After rehab Dr. Shirazi got a job at a hospital in Jinja. Probably because he had soiled his reputation among the Kampala hospitals. “One of the female foreign doctors had the same problem as mine. I discovered that she was also addicted to pethidine and codeine and we created a bond. She used to send me to town to buy the pethidine and the deal was that for every 10, I would take one. It was a good deal for me because we were using her money,” he recalls. The lady doctor one time passed out. Their arrangement had gone burst. She was flown out of the country for rehabilitation and Dr. Shirazi got yet another of his sacking letters.
Turning Point
Dr. Shirazi was admitted to Teen Challenge in Ntinda, an offshoot of Teen Challenge USA. It is mainly for teenagers but Dr. Shirazi in his 60s was admitted there. There was only one other patient in his 40s and most of the young people were teenagers, with the youngest being only 11.
“It is a Bible based program and it is here that I got spiritual awakening that helped in my recovery process. Some of the things I learnt were humility and resilience to do something about my problem. It is a one-year program but I was discharged after six
months because they were satisfied with the progress I had made.”
At the time of the interview Dr. Shirazi said he has been sober for more three years. “Even at parties I don’t touch alcohol. I’m determined to win the battle against drugs and alcohol once and for all,” he says.
He has been recalled for his job at the Nsambya hospital and despite it being close to Sin City (Kabalagala), the 66-year-old says he now knows better.
“In December last year I had a relapse for one day but I contacted my sponsor in the US and he said I shouldn’t consider it as a relapse. Since then, I have been sober for some good time and I like the feeling. We are now on good terms with my wife and daughters, and it hasn’t always been like that, because of the drugs. I want to keep it that way,” he vows.
He is now actively engaging himself in helping others. He is a sponsor to quite a number of people that he is guiding through the recovery process