Introducing the Vryheid Recovery Centre

Callaghan David Naidoo writes:-

MY NAME is Callaghan “Cally” David Naidoo. I am forty-eight years old and residing in Vryheid for the last seven years. I am also a recovering drug and alcohol addict.

I moved into Vryheid in 2008 when I was one year in recovery.

There were no recovery meetings in Vryheid. A recovery meeting is where one goes to get help with addiction of alcohol and drugs, to hear people share their experiences, strengths and hopes with each other. We attend these meetings to tell and to listen what it was like, what happened and what it is like now.

I took the initive to open a group in Vryheid in 2009 to sustain my sobriety and to help other suffering addict who did not know a way out. The initial venue was the Library Hall, thereafter the Anglican Church and now for the last three and a half years it is at the Vryheid Baptist Church.

These meeting are advertised in this newspaper in the classified section. These meeting have been successful and individuals have gone out and become rehabilitated and integrated into society and some individuals who have learnt enough have opened other recovery meetings. Later on in this letter I will talk about persons who cannot make it at group level and need to be institionialised.

Normally these meetings are in the evenings to accommodate the working class.

I also have meeting at the Vryheid Correctional Facility for both males and females, normally every Saturday afternoon. These inmates have consequently gone on and opened their own recovery meetings inside prison, and during their excercise hour are talking recovery, strength and hope with each other. God willing, when released, they will become functional human-beings in their communities.

When some of these addicts and alcoholics attend these meetings on a Thursday night they come in so beaten, broken and suicidal that we have to send them into a full-on rehabilitation center for twenty-eight days (it is the time it takes to break a habit.)

We send them to Durban, Pietermaritzburg or Gauteng depending where they have families to visit them whilst in rehab. For females there is only one in Clairwood, Durban. It is also very costly for the family to take them down and collect them after twenty-eight days.

These rehabs cost a nominal fee of approximately R2,000. Some accept you even if you cannot afford it, others ask for some groceries and a small donation.

To go into a medical paying rehab costs between R15,000 and R25,000, if not more. These medical-aid paying rehabs are run by therapists who have only studied to be councilors but lack the advantage of having first-hand experience what it is to be an addict or alcoholic themselves.

I myself was an active user of drugs and alcohol for twenty seven years, and got clean on February 18, 2007. It is said that we should keep busy and occupy ourselves by completing our studies, furthering them or getting ourselves a hobby once we stop.

As for me I decided to study the disease of addiction. I have now done this for eight and a half years. That gives me almost thirty six years of experience, so I could humbly call myself a professional and an expert in this losing game of using.

Today I am very passionate about helping others. At one stage in my life I thought that life was about me and that everything had to be centred around me; that I was God itself, until I heard someone share at a meeting that, “I am born for God and through God, and the only way to serve God is to serve my fellow human-beings.” Since hearing that I made it also my motto in life.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to work with the still suffering alcoholic and drug addict. I believe that God has blessed us all with talents and abilities and I strongly believe that if my experience through my suffering could help just one person then it was well worth it.

I have taken the initiative to apply to the NPO (Non Profit Organisation) for a rehabilitation centre in Vryheid, and on April 20 of this year, by God’s grace “The Vryheid Shelter, Halfway House And Recovery Centre” (VSHHRC) was entered into the register of the NPO.

It is three-in-one facility.

My vision is to clean up the streets of Vryheid with the hobos and vagrants, to put them into the shelter, give them a bar of soap, “hose them down”, give them second hand clothes, for them to sit in a big lounge and read magazines and books, to watch TV, give them three meals a day and work in a vegetable garden. Here each one will have to be sponsored.

The Halfway House is for when you come out of rehab and have no place to go to, you can be accommodated conditionally for a fee of R1,000 pm. You are free to go out and work but have to attend recovery meetings every evening and to be a role model to the patients that are in rehab because you were once a patient yourself.

The Recover Centre is basically a twenty-eight day program. It will cost between R1,500 to R2,000. All your meals are provided, you learn the disease of addiction, watch videos on substance abuse, learn to have a relationship with God, have individual counselling, learn discipline, obedience and responsibility and most importantly learn to love yourself.

We do not have such a facility in Vryheid and this town is in dire need of such a complex because of the escalating alcohol and drug abuse even amongst our youth.

Our children are bring targeted at street corners, shops, small complexes and garages. We need to stand together in this fight against this great social and health problem – addiction. This will be firstly for the Vryheid community and surrounding areas thereafter consideration for people out of town will be looked at.

I have a certificate in hand but need a premises from which to operate to kick start this project. I have approached all the obvious departments and believe me when I say “All” and no one has been forthcoming with any positive feedback.

So my plea is to the community if Vryheid and surrounding areas to help with any existing building or to build a new structure, bedding curtains, cutlery, blankets, or anything pertaining to this venture. I also welcome any suggestions one might have overlooked.

My contact details are Cally at 076 380 1144 or 071 575 7049 or e-mail callaghannaidoo49@gmail.com