There is No Hope Without Trust
– Chander M

Smoking 30 cigarettes and pulling on at least marijuana joints a day was a badge of honour for a creative journalist like me. Ever since I was 15 years old, I was in search of my creative muse, and this led to my experimenting with tobacco and hashish. At times, I would even have prescription drugs to get high. Having been brought up in Nizamuddin in Delhi, I would often go to the mazaar (mausoleum) of Nizamuddin Aulia (Sufi saint) and experience the Sufi way of life. Not that I had much idea of Hazrat Nizamuddin except that he was the first Sufi saint to have come to India from Persia. I was fascinated by the concept of how music can help the Dervish reach the haloed precincts of God. During the annual Urs mela (festival) I would often spend the better part of the night pulling hashish from a Turkish chillum (pipe), and the strains of Qawwali would offer me exciting moments of other-worldliness.

One day, I ran into a Dervish who was sitting near a grave adorned with a green ‘chaadar’ on my way to school. I saw him playing the flute with gay abandon, and when I stopped near the mazaar, he gestured me to sit down. I could see a smouldering chillum with hashish lying close by. With a pompous gesture, he pronounced, “Bachhe Khali ho jao, agar Allah ka bansuri banna hai toh” (Become empty like a flute if you want Allah to take charge of your life.)

I was deeply disturbed by his world view. Here I wanted to gain as much knowledge as I could to become a successful and productive human being, as taught in school. The Dervish and his unconventional ways had me hooked. On my way back from school, I would often stop by, and pull deep from the chillum. I would suddenly begin to notice things I wouldn’t have bothered to see when I was ‘normal.’ I realized that hashish would be the muse who would bring out the creative juices to flow within me. Soon, smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and pulling on three chillums became my way of life.

My experiments with LSD and mushroom made me progress further in my pursuit to be different from others. I soon emerged as a writer with promise and managed to join a newspaper office as a trainee journalist. My daily rendezvous with hashish helped me immensely, and I started getting appreciated for my editing and headline writing skills. What I didn’t notice was that my family was sick to the gills with my Bohemian ways, and my mother would often ring up hospital emergency wards to check if I was there. At times, I wouldn’t return home for days waiting for the effects of hashish to subside. By the time I was 20, my father stopped interacting with me even as I slipped deeper into addiction. My father would counter my wayward ways saying, “You may think you are a genius, but please stay outside my house.”

Professional life goes up in smoke

 My professional life began to get impacted due to my addiction. I started losing jobs and soon began to be known as a ‘Charsi’ (addict). It is here that my wife began to point out that I was becoming socially dysfunctional.

However, I was oblivious to my deteriorating social skills, and instead, my sense of denial became my driving force. One day my wife returned home from the office saying she had lost a promotion opportunity because her husband was an addict. With tears welling in her eyes, she told me to either shape up or ship out of her life. In that very instant, my intoxication-induced world came crashing down.

By now, my sister, my brother in law and my wife had closed in on a rehabilitation centre called Hope Trust at Hyderabad. Soon arrangements and with a great sense of trepidation along with the fear of losing the woman I love, I decided to check into the rehab for addiction treatment. One of the motivating factors was my realization that my ten years old son had been witnessing some of my excesses and daily quarrels with my wife.

Reaching Hope Trust

When I reached the facility with my wife, I was pleasantly surprised to find a well-furnished building with an air of positivity about it.

Life in Hope Trust helped me realize that I was lucky to be there: I had apparently checked in before I lost everything and hit my rock bottom. Also, I learned that many addicts died before they reached a rehab.

Soon I got comfortable in my daily schedule, which consisted of group therapy, individual counselling, audio-video sessions and Yoga. I was introduced to the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

It was in rehab that I decided to quit smoking and this became the turning point in my life. Now, you may ask how did I manage to do the impossible. The Counsellor would tell me to stay away by the hour. One hour stretched to two, then on to four, and by the time I felt pride in staying away from smoking for the day. It is here that I learned to live life one day at a time, something that became my mantra to stay sober. The next powerful tool that came to my rescue was the humbling Serenity Prayer. It goes like this:

“God grant me the serenity,
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.”

Through all my struggles, my counsellors stood by me like a rock. I had a tendency to intellectualize and one of the counsellors told me: ‘When you are drowning, ask if the straw is made of teak o mahogany. Don’t question, simply grab the straw.’ The message drove home.

One of the most critical daily class we had was called ‘Thoughts and Feelings’. Every resident had to pen down 5 negative thoughts and share it in the group in the presence of a counsellor. We were given a list of character assets and defects and had to identify the feeling behind the negative thought so that we could get in touch with our real emotions —feelings which had been buried deep and numbed by drinking and substance abuse. This is because addicts don’t share their innermost thoughts and this becomes one of the major triggers for us to sink deeper into addiction. It is here that I became closer to my inmates. And started to discover the real me.

 Autobiography mode

Another brilliant exercise that we were asked to do was what they called writing our ‘autobiography’. We had to write our life stories in detail, share it in the group Regressive Therapy. Here, each one of us was given a blank notebook and we had to write our autobiography and share it with other inmates so that we could trace how our personalities were shaped into what we had become. This exercise helped me come to terms with the writer within me and I realized that I wrote much better without intoxication. Life had come full circle.

Before leaving the rehab, I had applied to many online job sites. Soon I landed a job as an online editor for a prestigious journal and was back in the thick of the action.

That is why I always say there would have been no hope for me without trust.  Even though I embarked on a new life, the disease of addiction stopped me twice in my tracks, in the past 15 years. Even today, it is the Serenity Prayer, the 12 steps, living life one day at a time, along with the Big Book of AA that keeps me going. But believe me, I am enjoying the fruits of recovery in more ways than one.

Thank you, Hope Trust, for having transformed me into a better and caring human being!