Ken’s story: part two

I was caught in a pattern of relapse after relapse and they got longer, deeper and darker each time. I no longer had a job and the rich successful lifestyle was just a faded memory. I had no friends left because of the constant lying and deceit that had become part of my day to day life.

My life went from one fix to the other, I was regularly using heroin by this stage and I knew deep in my heart that there was no escape. I weighed forty five kilogram’s, my skin was constantly broken out in sores and my teeth were brown, cracked and broken from the constant heat of the crack pipe, I looked like a junkie, I was a junkie.

I was using between £200.00 to £500.00 per day to support the drugs habit, I had sold everything my mother owned, drained her bank account by cashing fraudulent checks and made my way through the money my father had left me when he passed away.

I don’t much remember my father’s passing as I was lost on the drugs. I didn’t even speak at his funeral, nobody did. My new friends were people in the same situation as me, drug addicts who needed to feed a habit, they understood and I found comfort there.

Prostitutes would offer me a place to lay my head and some basic food and water. They were just doing what they had to do to get by and as a male, I was able to offer a little security.

I saw and experienced things that are difficult to explain, I had knives and guns pulled on me, I saw first hand human trafficking, child prostitution and organized crime. The addicts I met were mostly good people who had become addicts as I had.

Their story of getting there may be slightly different but in the end it was the same. I never met a happy addict. I never met an addict that wanted to be an addict. The grip of the narcotic is strong and your way out is death or jail. I knew a few who were taken by death; I was lucky and went to jail.

The arrest was like something you may see in a movie, when I think back on it it plays in my mind in slow motion. Four police vans with sirens blaring screeched to a halt outside the place I was staying, five armed officers jumped from the vehicles with the weapons cocked.

I still remember the cold click, click sound of the R4 assault rifles being made ready to fire, I had no doubt that they meant business. I was cuffed, shoved in a van with my co-accused and taken to the local station for questioning. Interrogation from the South African Police Force at that time was not a gentle affair, they always got their confession….

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