As narrated by PAMELA AGATHA KITONSA
She stares at me with a rather calm demeanor, talks in an utterly calculated manner with an air of a subtle authority. She looks perfectly healthy as she carries on with the closing remarks of our extensively long conversation.
“You see, when you get addicted to a particular substance, the addiction does not only stop at that substance, it as well extends to other substances and vices such as marijuana and constant sex regardless of who you do it with.” She remarks
while showing me different body scars of improper injection administration.
Pamela like many before her has a story of recovering from addiction. What makes her experience striking is the fact that her battle with addiction was with a medically prescribed drug.
Rewinding two hours back, I can vividly remember sitting on the couch with this lady who introduces herself as a 40 year old mother, wife, and hard-working educator. Despite all this plethora of enviable responsibilities, Pamela battled a lethal addiction with pethidine, a prescription drug, for almost four years.
The genesis …..
“It all started in 2008 when I got sick,” she recalls. “I had severe chest pain and when I went to the Heart Institute of Mulago, doctors diagnosed me with angina, a heart ailment,” she says. Meanwhile, her heart ailment meanwhile went on worsening and it was one fateful day that she got a sudden excruciating attack. As it was an emergency, she could not be rushed to the heart Institute which
was far and was admitted at a nearby hospital.
“Luckily I had health insurance,” she says.
“By the time I was rushed to hospital, my oxygen levels had drastically reduced, so I was put on oxygen and during the course of recuperation, I was put on a cocktail of other drugs. Among these drugs was Pethidine and given to me on many much more occasions than the doctor’s prescription stated,” she reveals.
She loved the feeling the drug gave her. Even after leaving the hospital, she kept asking for Pethidine. With time, the effect of the Pethidine started wearing off. She even sleep-walked in the night. Her parents expressed concern. They called the cardiologist from the heart Institute who saw a nurse inject her with Pethidine. When the doctor asked her how long she had been using it, she said four days of consistent dosage. The doctor immediately warned that she was on the verge of getting addicted and ordered that she be taken off the drug immediately.
“Unfortunately, this came too late. By the next day my body demanded the drug,” she recalls. “I boldly walked up to the hospital pharmacy and asked for doses of the drug.” The addiction had officially begun. The drug came in small cylinders of 100millilitres with each box having 10 of them and the mode of administration was through use of syringe.
“There was an irresistible feeling that came with using Pethidine. Each time I was injected I felt elevated, almost heavenly. The drug had an indescribable soothing feeling”
When Pamela left the hospital, she continued using the drug, so that her addiction and her need for more dosages got worse. At times, she consumed so much Pethidine that she needed Valium to lower her heart rate. She was getting so deeply engrossed in the art of doing the drug, she knew what the drug did, what doses to take, and which drug neutralizer to administer in case of any excessive intake.
Her addiction propelled her to learn how to inject herself without the help of nurses.
Previously, her addiction had stopped at consuming a maximum of a box of pethidine a day, that is 1000 milliliters of the drug down her veins in a mere 24 hours.
“By December of 2008, my addiction was running further out of hand, and I started using two boxes a day. To be honest, I never consumed all the 2000 milliliters. I used to stop at 1700. That was 17 cylinders. That was my biggest peak of consumption ever. I remember the day I was in the Old Taxi Park, in one of the taxis, shooting the 15th cylinder down my vein. I did this in the taxi because I could no longer purchase from most pharmacies around town because my husband had gone around to pharmacies to tell them to stop selling the drug to me.
“He even went as far as pinning posters of my face issuing a directive that no drug should ever be sold to me”
Drugs affect the family ….
Once when she had just been discharged from hospital, after her husband saw her with a canular, she said she needed it because she was sick. Knowing her history with heart ailments, he did not doubt her story. He seemed to care less about the bill because she was insured. So, he took her to IHK when she persistently kept the canular on. He noticed on one of his visits that no nurses were tending to her because she was at the pharmacy.
“He checked my handbag and found one of the cylinders there. He took it to pharmacies and asked around. He discovered what I was up to and beat me badly. We became enemies. A rift was created in our marriage so that our marriage disintegrated,” she says.
“The drug problem affected my children as well. I had two kids by that time, one was in P.1 and the other in P.3. They were taken to boarding school because I could no longer look after them from home. And you know the effect of this on a mother,” she recalls.
“That day,” she recollects, “I went to the park and observed the taxi sequence. I spotted the fifth in line so that I would have ample time to get the best out of my wait.” While waiting, she kept pushing to the limit! The fifth taxi took on passengers, but when she went to exit she collapsed. Fortunately, on checking her items, the people around her found her insurance card and rushed her to Case Clinic which was near the Old Taxi Park.
“All I remember upon waking up is that the medics were many, one went out and came back with a small cup with medicine and poured it in my mouth. Suddenly, I stopped breathing. But I grabbed the oxygen by the side of my bed, turned it on, and put on the mask. The drugs they had given me were meant to reduce my blood pressure, but unfortunately, my pressure went up. If it were not for the oxygen, I would have died on the spot,” she recalled.
Later on, she was given a bill of over 300,000 shillings. She tried contacting friends and relatives but they were already too fed up to help. Others thought it was one of her usual scams to purchase Pethidine. The only person willing to help her was a friend who could not even foot a quarter of the bill. She tried talking to the medics about her bill and they referred her to the accounts section. She pleaded with them and they let her go.
After this experience, she got off Pethidine for about five months. Five months later, she relapsed and went back to using the drug. Her husband suggested that she go to Butabika for help. On the way there, she kept having a heated argument with her husband, which made the nurses think she needed intense help. While at Butabika she found a supplier of Pethidine, within Butabika itself. With time, some nurses realised that she was still on drugs and not recovering, so they released her.
The turning point ….
Upon getting out of the facility in November, she was met with news that her closest cousin, who was only fourteen at the time, was battling leukemia and had only six months to live. “At this point in time, I felt life was sincerely meaningless,” she recalls. Her ailing cousin went for chemotherapy two times and by the time she came back from the second, she had no hair. To Pamela, her life was no longer worthy and she picked up the abuse of Pethidine once again.
That May, when she was in town, a relative called her and told her that her cousin had passed on. At her cousin’s vigil, several relatives looked down on her with a scornful face; others told her that she should have died. She reflected upon what they were saying and it resonated within her. A young girl of fourteen who had treasured life had lost it, yet she was wasting hers away.
“After the burial, I admitted powerlessness and asked God to come to my rescue,” she recalls. “I went to Serenity rehab for a while, as I continued being prayerful. This was my turning point. I reflected upon my life. The good thing is that my mom and husband never gave up on me. It is actually my mom who taught me to be prayerful for it gave me a certain calmness and inner peace.”
“Addiction to any substance comes with addiction to many other things. I had also learned how to take marijuana, alcohol, and other substances I did not know. Worse still, I had even started going out with other men as my sex urge was always strong.”
“I couldn’t get off Pethidine at once, but as each day went by, I kept removing cylinder by cylinder off my daily intake. My body finally got used to living without Pethidine. I could even look at a box without craving for it. In mid 2011, I can say after many hours of prayer, resistance to the craving and family support, I completed my road to recovery
“A month later, I conceived. I later gave birth to a baby girl. Our marriage that I had put on the rocks became what it used to be. I got a job as a head teacher at a school in Bunga and life got better.
“My word to anyone out there battling addiction is that, you cannot walk your road to recovery alone. You need family, prayer and assistance. And the first thing anyone should do is admit that she needs help.
“This experience has been very life changing in that I never take any medicine without cross checking it thoroughly. I am always vigilant and inquisitive at the same time. This experience has enabled me to
visit rehabilitation centers and motivate other people fighting addiction. I tell them that they too can make it.”