Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

"Nur­ture your mind with great thoughts, for you will nev­er go any high­er than you think."

-Ben­jamin Dis­raeli

What an ug­ly sce­nario-the tragedy of ad­dic­tion. For the past 26 years I have been telling ad­dicts that there is a mys­tery about ad­dic­tion-it makes you hate those who love you and love those who hate you. The dis­re­spect that ad­dicts hurl at their par­ents and sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers is sim­ply shock­ing.I re­mem­ber deal­ing with a client from Mor­vant. He was slashed by the drug deal­er. Why? Well he smoked more co­caine than his salary could af­ford, so he con­stant­ly owed the vam­pire. Yes vam­pire; deal­er is too pol­ished a word. Well in the mafi­at­ic struc­ture you have terms such as drug deal­er and drug lord. The lord is the don; the deal­er is the street op­er­a­tive. The Mor­vant ad­dict re­ceived 16 stitch­es af­ter the slash­ing in­ci­dent. That same guy came in­to the coun­selling of­fice and cursed his moth­er. Sounds fa­mil­iar? But what got him so mad? Well his moth­er told me that soon af­ter he was dam­aged, he had to get med­ical treat­ment. But with­in a week, he re­turned to the co­caine restau­rant and pur­chased more stuff from the same vam­pire. Many psy­chol­o­gists, ther­a­pists and oth­er "ists" have tried to pen­e­trate the mind of the ad­dict. In the ear­ly stage you have the para­noia-see­ing a ghost be­hind every post. The process in­volves sub­tle changes, noth­ing that re­sem­bles the man­ic de­pres­sive state where you have a vi­o­lent mood-shift. No, you have the al­most im­per­cep­ti­ble per­son­al­i­ty changes. Then the speed in­creas­es, and it reach­es the point even­tu­al­ly where the ad­dict sees any­one who tries to help as the en­e­my. Get it right: the par­ent, the coun­sel­lor, the sig­nif­i­cant oth­er is the en­e­my, not the drug deal­er in the chron­ic phase of this pro­gres­sive dis­ease. All hell de­scends up­on the fam­i­ly and may ex­tend to the com­mu­ni­ty. The par­ent may ex­hib­it de­nial just as the ad­dict. Af­ter some tragedy, you will hear the par­ents say­ing, "But he was a good boy." Lis­ten, the on­ly time that boy was a good boy was when cock had gold­en teeth and don­keys had wings. But par­ents who are try­ing to un­der­stand the mys­tery of ad­dic­tion ex­hib­it this over­whelm­ing de­sire to de­fend and ex­plain the re­al­i­ty of the tragedy.

Of course, apart from the psy­cho­log­i­cal ill­ness of de­nial, there is the fear, es­pe­cial­ly in sin­gle-par­ent homes. Ad­dicts are par­tic­u­lar­ly bru­tal on their par­ents, and so there is a lot of fear. The par­ents would have been beat­en be­fore, and they know they can be beat­en again. Then we are very aware of the lim­i­ta­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice and the re­sponse which takes place at snail's pace. By the time the po­lice ar­rive, there is blood and flesh on the ground. A gang mem­ber who is a slave to drugs is a com­pound mon­ster. That should ex­plain the vi­cious na­ture of some of the crimes. Then some of them drink blood be­cause they are oc­cul­tic dis­ci­ples. They are not wor­ried about the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment de­bate be­cause they be­lieve that they will nev­er get caught. Some­how, the de­tec­tion rate is su­per-low. And in case you did not know, peo­ple in the vil­lage know who pulled the trig­ger. The po­lice of­fi­cers, lawyers, busi­ness­men, cus­tom of­fi­cers, politi­cians who are in­volved in the drug trade must have no con­science, no heart. One frus­trat­ed rel­a­tive of a client told me re­cent­ly, "Pas­tor, the of­fi­cer owns the block." In that same vil­lage, an ad­dict was stripped naked and chopped with a cut­lass. Ap­par­ent­ly, the law of sup­ply and de­mand has caused the price of guns to sky­rock­et, so the cut­lass is more af­ford­able. The guns are re­served for the big hits. One of the most amaz­ing fea­tures of crime is that you go to some com­mu­ni­ties, and the drug deal­er is sit­ting on a chair with mega-gold­en jew­el­ry. He does not op­er­ate like an un­der­cov­er agent, no-a thou­sand times no. He knows every­body and every­body knows him. He comes out in the evening to en­joy the bliss of sun­set and the ap­proach­ing moon. For years he has been ply­ing his trade and is called the un­touch­able. Be­hind him is a faith­ful body­guard. Ob­vi­ous­ly he is well paid be­cause he seems to be able to pur­chase the steroids to pre­serve his "mus­cle mass." They don't ap­pear to be a de­struc­tive duet. They are the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, they suc­ceed where min­istries fail. Do you re­mem­ber Es­co­bar? In Colom­bia, he pro­vid­ed foot­ball fields, su­per­mar­kets etc. In Ja­maica, Dudus con­tributed to a state-of-the-art med­ical fa­cil­i­ty.

Part of the prob­lem is the nag­ging de­pen­den­cy syn­drome. Cit­i­zens love to feast on the beast. Once the mon­ey and favours are flow­ing, they don't care about the par­a­sitic-dead­ly-trade that is gen­er­at­ing the hand­outs. The sad truth is that there is an in­ter-gen­er­a­tional di­men­sion in this busi­ness, this bloody busi­ness. How many times we have seen drug deal­ers get­ting shot and killed, and then a rel­a­tive takes over the busi­ness? But it does not stop there. In east Trinidad, there are grand­chil­dren who are so skilled that they are per­form­ing bet­ter than their grand­par­ents. O God, have mer­cy on this coun­try. I am re­mind­ed of a quo­ta­tion from the book You Can Heal Your Life. In that book, Louis L Hay states: "Most of us choose to think the same kind of thoughts our par­ents use to think, but we don't have to con­tin­ue to do this. There is no law writ­ten that says we can on­ly think in one way. What­ev­er I choose to be­lieve be­comes true for me." We have to keep en­cour­ag­ing our youth to lift the lev­el of their think­ing. As adults, we have to be gen­uine role mod­els trans­mit­ting val­ues in a con­sis­tent and pos­i­tive man­ner. We must pro­tect sin­gle par­ents from the avalanche of their in­dis­ci­plined sons and daugh­ters. We have to ad­dress the Car­ni­val bac­cha­nal and bla­tant hypocrisy. Many par­ents have trav­elled on the high­way of grief and died think­ing of their un­con­trol­lable chil­dren. One fa­ther, who had enor­mous courage, went to a drug-push­ing den and threat­ened the vam­pire who was us­ing his son to dis­trib­ute drugs. Look where we have reached. We have gang croc­o­diles on the ground floor threat­en­ing their ri­vals on the fifth floor, warn­ing them about the con­se­quences if they dared to leave their apart­ments. How are those on the fifth floor sup­posed to live? Maybe they are sup­posed to get para­chutes so they can es­cape the anger and ha­tred of their ground-floor op­po­nents. Be­lieve it or not, there are cit­i­zens who have faith in God and they are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. But they are be­ing op­pressed by an in­sen­si­tive bu­reau­cra­cy. Let us help them to help oth­ers. We can­not give up and we must not sur­ren­der.