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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Coming Clean

by

20140702

See­ing her three-year-old daugh­ter about to use the para­pher­na­lia to smoke crack co­caine snapped Bev­er­ly Mor­son, moth­er of five, back in­to re­al­i­ty.She made a firm de­ci­sion then and there to change her life around and get all the help nec­es­sary to get out of her drug ad­dic­tion."O my God! I am cre­at­ing an ad­dict of my daugh­ter," Mor­son, who was 36-years-old then, blurt­ed out as she pushed open the door to her bed­room at her Ari­ma home over 23 years ago."I had left home and aban­doned my chil­dren in the house–a teenage son and my three-year-old girl. I was liv­ing on the streets. I would usu­al­ly fre­quent my house to see what I could pick up to sell."This day was like any oth­er day. I went to the house to see what I could get to sell so that I could use the mon­ey to buy crack and as I pushed the door to my bed­room I saw my lit­tle daugh­ter sit­ting there with all my para­pher­na­lia lined up around her. She was hold­ing the box of match­es and, just like she would see me do on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, took a match–and as she was about to strike it I just leaped for­ward and snatched her up from the ground," Mor­son said.

"I could not help but cry and cry out to God. All that was run­ning through my head was that I was cre­at­ing a young ad­dict of my daugh­ter."That was the break­ing point for me. At that mo­ment I knew I had to make a per­ma­nent change in my life and do all in my pow­er to get over this ad­dic­tion."Mor­son took a bold step of faith, left her daugh­ter in the care of her teenage son and sought pro­fes­sion­al help to come clean. It was a move she has nev­er re­gret­ted.Mor­son's daugh­ter is now in her 20s but is at home suf­fer­ing from a men­tal ill­ness. "My con­stant drug use dur­ing the nine months I was preg­nant with her caused this and she is at home not able to live a nor­mal life. She suf­fers from a lot of seizures," Mor­son said.

Her first two sons live on their own and are fight­ing with is­sues of their own. One of them livess in the Unit­ed States."My last two girls are do­ing well. One of them is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing her de­gree in graph­ic de­sign and the oth­er is wait­ing on her Cape re­sults. She wants to be­come a teacher."Mor­son start­ed us­ing drugs from the age of 11, start­ing out with mar­i­jua­na. She even­tu­al­ly be­came a va­grant liv­ing on the streets."My moth­er died when I was at a very young age and my fa­ther was nev­er around. I was left in the care of my grand­moth­er, who was a dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an. Ed­u­ca­tion and man­ners mat­tered to her but that did not go well with me. I be­gan to rebel and start­ed drugs, from mar­i­jua­na to crack. When my grand­moth­er died I was about 16 years and al­ready a full-fledged drug ad­dict," Mor­son said.

"I al­ways want­ed to fit in. I al­ways want­ed to feel like I be­long, I want­ed to feel loved. Any­body who showed me that at­ten­tion, I would grav­i­tate to­wards them. Most of them were delin­quents, users and abusers, in­clud­ing users of il­lic­it drugs. Hence the rea­son how I end­ed up as an ad­dict liv­ing on the streets. "As the years went by I kept say­ing to my­self that I want­ed a bet­ter life but I just did not know how to get out and how to ac­cess it. I guess that day when I saw my daugh­ter I had no choice but to get out and find the way out," she added.Mor­son was an ar­dent drug user for 25-plus years.Last Thurs­day, made it 23 years, nine months since she last used drugs.

A new woman

To­day, she feels she stands a liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny as to the good­ness of God and the suc­cess of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes she has had to en­dure through­out her re­cov­ery years.Mor­son is now the pro­gramme man­ag­er of Seren­i­ty Place Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre for Women at Cochrane Vil­lage, Point Fortin."I am proud to give back to so­ci­ety and I am proud that I am able to help women be­cause I went through all those things they are go­ing through and have gone through," she said.The cen­tre, which was es­tab­lished in 1996, has seen over 375 res­i­dents, in­clud­ing na­tion­als from Guyana, San­to Domin­go, Be­lize, Bar­ba­dos and T&T."Safe­ly I can say about 65 of the res­i­dents are do­ing very well and have been rein­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety.

Some of them have mi­grat­ed and liv­ing suc­cess­ful, clean lives. Two of them are now back at the cen­tre, this time help­ing me to help oth­ers. I feel great and self-ful­filled to see the suc­cess sto­ries emerg­ing," Mor­son said.The cen­tre re­ceives a sub­ven­tion from the gov­ern­ment, and Mor­son hosts fund-rais­ing events."The cen­tre takes a lot of mon­ey and I am al­ways ask­ing for help. We al­so get as­sis­tance from cor­po­rate bod­ies and in­di­vid­u­als. The cen­tre is grow­ing and we want to keep it that way and make sure that we have the nec­es­sary funds to take care of these women who ei­ther will­ing­ly come to us for help or are sent to us through the ju­di­cia­ry sys­tem for help."

The drug prob­lem

Glob­al­ly it is es­ti­mat­ed that in 2012, some 243 mil­lion peo­ple cor­re­spond­ing to some 5.2 per cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion aged 15 to 64, had used an il­lic­it drug–main­ly a sub­stance be­long­ing to the cannabis, opi­oid, co­caine or am­phet­a­mine-type stim­u­lant (ATS) group–at least once in the pre­vi­ous year.This was re­cent­ly dis­closed in the 2014 World Drug Use Re­port.

Oth­er re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive cen­tres where help can be sought in­clude HEAL Cen­tre for Drug Pre­ven­tion, Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and De­vel­op­ment of Healthy Lifestyles and Re­birth House.The Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre is a ther­a­peu­tic com­mu­ni­ty es­tab­lished as a refuge for re­cov­er­ing male sub­stance abusers.The cen­tres are al­so as­sist­ed by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.


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