Seek help to beat your addiction

“I landed up in a very successful career,” he said.

“I have worked for three international companies – all in the mining industry – so I’ve managed to do very well, unfortunately that success came at a price.

“In order to cope, in order to make it through a long day, plus a long evening and a long day again, I turned to a lot of drugs.”

This was one of the testimonies shared at the first 12 Step Rally held at the the Manger Care Centre, in Brentwood Park, on June 16.

Twelve speakers from various fellowships that deal with addiction, including Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Cocaine Anonymous (CA), Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), family support group for family of alcoholics (Al-Anon) and Gamblers Anonymous (GA), spoke of their experiences with addiction and the 12 steps to recovery.

Paul said it all started when he smoked his first joint of cannabis in Grade Five.

The Benoni resident said cannabis was a gateway drug for him, and eventually led to him abusing “every drug on the market”.

He said he realised his life was a shambles when he used four bags of cocaine seven days a week.

Paul decided to seek help and has now been clean for seven months.

“I can’t say I would have recovered without the 12 steps,” he told the City Times.

“The 12 steps was my saving grace; it is no less than a miracle.”

Another speaker, Brad, told the audience at the Manger Care Centre how years of addiction ruled his life.

His 11-year addiction developed after he had his first sip of alcohol at the age of 13.

He soon used cannabis, LSD, Ecstasy, CAT and cocaine.

Brad entered NA and soon developed a relationship with another user, despite he and his partner being advised not to get involved in a relationship.

They did not heed the advice.

“There came that day, in a moment of weakness, and we went on a binge together,” said Brad.

“We went to Hillbrow and she had her two-year-old son in the car and we went on a spree.

“There was about a good six or seven hours in which we neglected that child – we just knew the child was lying in the back, had his bottle, and that was it.

“I can’t even tell you if that child cried.”

Brad said he received treatment for his addiction on three occasions, only to relapse – on one occasion the day after being released from treatment.

The 12 step programme helped him fight the addiction from which he has been free for six years.

“I started working the steps and, before I knew it, things changed,” he said.

“I met my sponsor over weekends, we did step work, and slowly but surely I started seeing all these changes in my life.”

To seek help at the NA visit www.na.org.za.

*Paul not his real name.

Here are the 12 steps:

Step one: We admitted that we’re powerless over alcohol or addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step two: Came to believe that a power greater than myself can restore my sanity.

Step three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Step four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.

Step five: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step six: We’re entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character.

Step seven: Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.

Step eight: Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step nine: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when wrong we promptly admitted it.

Step eleven: Sought thorough prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principals in all of our affairs.