by Nikki Ridley
I knew that I would simply be aiding the maintenance of his addiction by giving him sanctuary, as much as if I were to open my purse and offer him money for his next fix. I could not stop the inevitable. Only he could, if things were hard enough out there.
So when I heard him at the door that night, I opened a window to tell him to go. I told him ‘No – I can’t do this. You have a choice. If you want to come home, you must be clean, but if you want to continue taking drugs, you must go, and if you die, you die.’
I closed the window and tried to forget that he was there until he left, but he didn’t leave. He stayed and he begged. ‘Please, Mom! You have got to let me in! Please, Mom! Please let me in.’ It was incessant.
I went to bed and he stood under my bedroom window, calling and pleading. He was so persistent and he wouldn’t leave.
You can be as tough as you like, but it is so hard to just lie in bed and listen to that, and eventually it erodes your resolve. Mother instinct takes over, and so I decided to let him in. Mother instinct and a measure of embarrassment too, I have to admit. I had neighbours and they must have been able to hear him.
I crumbled. I did not expect Paul to look the picture of health, but what I saw when I opened the door shocked me.
Paul had previously always maintained a fairly fit appearance. Having been a sportsman most of his teenage life, and having a naturally healthy constitution, had no doubt put him in good stead to survive the physical ravages of drugs longer than most. But now he was thin, and he looked sick. He looked at me and tried to walk through the door, but couldn’t. He had walked this far, but now he didn’t even have the strength to step over the threshold. He was in bad shape, and he really did need help. I had to half-carry my tall and formerly strapping son into the house on my back, with him barely able to place one foot in front of another. It wasn’t just exhaustion that had crippled him. It was the wounds in his groin from shooting up. For him to have come this far … he must have been in agony.
Perhaps this was it. Perhaps he had hit rock bottom. Did I dare allow myself to hope?
I put him in a hot bath and gave him something to eat. Then I nursed him for two days. He told me it was over. He wanted to stop. He meant it this time.
Two days, that’s all it took. His innate strength saw him recover so quickly, and he was off again. He had to go see a friend.
So much for rock bottom.
Not yet ready to give up on the rehabs, we then approached Phoenix House in Johannesburg. We were desperate by this stage, and we asked them to please take Paul. It was our last choice, because we’d heard before that they didn’t take Wellconal addicts.
The doctor in charge flatly refused. He said he didn’t take Wellconal addicts because you had little chance of success with them. We were disappointed, and I felt as if we were being left alone with no support at all now. I had to concede, though, that as let down as I felt, this man – this highly qualified man – knew what he was talking about. He had obviously tried and failed to the point where he would not waste his time with them any more.
It left us without hope. We realised that there was nothing more we could do. We had kept trying. He had been arrested, been to prison and rehabs, stolen from us and lied constantly, and we had kept on giving him chances. He had kept on promising to clean up his act. The financial drain of all the rehabs, the drives to visit him and the emotional drain of the days in court … It was getting so that I couldn’t cope with any of it any more.
He kept coming home. He kept telling us he wanted to reform, and this time he’d do it. Nothing was about to change.
We didn’t want him in the house if he was using, so he was clever. When he needed us, or our belongings, he would tell us that this time it was it. He really wanted to stop. He hadn’t used for a while and he wanted to come home and stay home. Then he’d put himself in his room.
We’d stopped believing him, but we couldn’t turn him away again. That hadn’t worked. It sent him back to the streets. He wasn’t going to get better there any more than he was going to get better in his room.
He was arrested again. This time for breaking into a car in Hillbrow. Mark was overseas again, and I remember walking into the police station alone. It was full of the human evidence of what Hillbrow had to offer, and Paul was among them – bruised and battered. He had been beaten up by a night watchman before his arrest. I didn’t pay bail, but there was so much confusion in the place that they lost the docket and had to release him.
We had to get him out of Johannesburg, but since rehabs were not helping, we took up an offer from my niece. It was that or nothing, and ‘nothing’ was to let him kill himself.
He agreed to go, just as he had always agreed to the rehabs. It was just a matter of getting him at the right time, when he wasn’t so high that he didn’t feel the need for help, and not so far down that the craving had taken over, but of course it was also because he knew no matter where he was, he could carry on.
The night before we left, Paul asked me if he could borrow my car to go to the shops. He needed toothpaste and a few other things. He said he’d be back in a few minutes.
We got a call a short while later from the Millpark Holiday Inn. Paul had been found unconscious in a toilet stall in the hotel after someone saw his foot sticking out from under the door. They’d called an ambulance and the paramedics were giving him oxygen.
Paul was comatose and they rushed him to hospital. Incredibly, he had been found in time, and the oxygen administered to him saw him recover very quickly. He woke quickly and was only in hospital for two days, but it had been a close call.
I thought of an evening when I’d called him for supper and he hadn’t answered. He’d been living in the flat downstairs, and when he didn’t answer, I’d gone down to find him. I’d knocked on the locked door, and I’d looked in the window, because I thought he might be sleeping and I could see his bed from the window. The bed was empty. I was sure he was there. I knocked and knocked, and when I looked through the keyhole to see the key in the lock, I knew without a doubt that he was inside.
I left him, but after several hours when he still hadn’t emerged, I became worried.
I went round the back, calling all the while, and looked in the bathroom window. Empty. I carried on calling, and I tried to push the key through the lock so I could open it from the outside. Then I went round to the bathroom window again and called through it, finally getting my answer.
‘Ja, Ma, what do you want?’
He must have been passed out against the wall by the door.
I recently found a notebook in which I listed the things that Paul stole from us and the things we knew he pawned and stole from shops. It’s called my ‘So Sad’ book. Those words are written on the front, with teardrops drawn underneath them.
2 suitcases New watch
Mark’s cuff links Padded jacket
My father’s cuff links Video games
New radio from Singapore Spotlight
Duvet Walkman
Bedside table Roof racks
Fridge Tape recorder
Videorecorder Pants
20 new CDs from a shop Jersey
Clothes and ladies’ gym shoes Army kit
Leather coat Tackies
Gold necklace Shoes
All the clothes we bought him for a new job Shirts
Overcoat Pots
My velvet coat My new shoes
My black jacket Baseball mitt
Lifejacket 2 wetsuits
Bottle whisky Car radio
Lynn’s riding hat Car jack
Blue blanket 2 guitars
More shoes Mark’s watch
Videos New binoculars
Gas cylinder Records & tapes
2 suits Antique typewriter
Digger’s tools Nigel’s tools
Bedside lamp Maid’s silver chain
R650 out of account 2 hammocks
R150 out of account More blankets
Goods lifted f
rom Wanderers Gold & pearl brooch
So sad
Determination Can Get You Nowhere
Dale
PAUL’S DRUG HABIT WAS FAIRLY ADVANCED BY THE TIME I found out about it. As cousins, we had known each other all our lives, but we hadn’t been very close – he growing up in Johannesburg and I in Kroonstad, and his parents had, understandably, tried to keep things quiet and deal with it all themselves.
I had gone to stay with them for a while in Johannesburg, and it had come up at some stage. They had to tell me, because I had noticed things.
The most obvious was the stuff that disappeared from the house while I was there, including the microwave, but I had also been very aware of the emotional undertones in the house. I could see and feel that his parents were taking considerable strain. Once I knew the reason, they opened up even more to me, and Uncle Mark in particular became very emotional when talking about Paul.
He questioned where he and his wife had gone wrong, why Paul had turned out this way. He also worried a great deal about the effect all of it was having on Aunt Val.
I remember feeling confused and angry. I couldn’t understand how Paul could throw his life away like that. He’d had everything growing up – wonderful parents, a beautiful home, the best schooling, plenty of money. He’d had everything his heart could desire. I had grown up with so much less than him, and he was throwing it all away. Didn’t he appreciate it? Didn’t he know that he could have been anything he wanted to be? He’d had it all.
It upset me deeply, as did the fact that he was hurting his parents. I felt very sorry for them. I didn’t think they deserved all this after all they had given him. I grew very fond of them during the time that I stayed with them, and I admired their strength. I felt that they should be enjoying their grown children, not being ‘run through the mill’ by one of them, worrying all the time, and dreading a phone call at some unearthly hour that might deliver the news that he was dead.
I had returned to Kroonstad with the knowledge of Paul’s habit, but without a clue as to what to do about it. They had tried everything. What could I do? My aunt and I had become close during my stay, we kept in contact, and the opportunity eventually arose for me to help. Although I hadn’t been close to Paul growing up, and as angry as I was, I was not prepared to just dismiss him. I had grown fond of him too, and I wanted to do something … and I desperately wanted to help my uncle and aunt. They had been so good to me.
So when Paul returned home from his latest arrest, and Aunt Val told me that she had no idea what to do with him, I offered to take him off her hands.
Val told me that she and my uncle couldn’t face another prison sentence. They’d had it. Enough was enough.
They agreed that it would be a good idea if Paul spent some time with me and my (then) husband Garth. It would give them a much needed break, and we hoped that his being away from Johannesburg would help him, as it would be harder for him to get hold of ‘pinks’. Aunt Val gave me a book on Tough Love and coached me a little as to what signs to look for as evidence that he was using again.
I knew that I was letting myself in for a heck of a time, but, being an optimist and a Christian with a strong faith, I was sure I could manage, and that my efforts would amount to something.
Garth and I offered Paul a job in our restaurant. We reasoned that he would need something to keep him occupied and out of trouble, and it would help reintroduce him to a ‘normal routine’ after his stint in prison.
I don’t remember the exact date that Paul was due to arrive in Kroonstad – it was a long time ago – but it was winter. Around June or July 1993.
I do remember, however, that it was late on a Sunday morning when I received another call from Val. They were supposed to have driven Paul through to us that afternoon, but he was in hospital. He had overdosed, but he was going to be okay.
I was so angry! How could he do this? How could he let his parents down again?
I was also disappointed on another level. I had psyched myself up for his arrival, and I had been looking forward to seeing him and getting him on the straight and narrow. (I was so confident then!)
Aunt Val said that she had allowed Paul to go to the local shops that morning to buy some toiletries. She had given him just enough money to buy what he needed, but he hadn’t returned. He’d been found a little later in a toilet stall at a Holiday Inn, unconscious. He had taken the money his mother had given him and used it for one last ‘hit’ before leaving Jo’burg.
However, over the following week we heard that Paul was recovering well, and that he would make it to Kroonstad after all, and I became excited at the thought of the challenge that lay ahead.
Val tried to warn me …
When they finally brought Paul to us a week later, I was shocked. It was the first time I had seen someone who’d overdosed.
He was thin and very pale, with big dark rings around his eyes. He looked sick, but, still, there was hope. I was sure of it. As awful as he looked, those sick eyes still had a sparkle in them, and in typical Paul style, he somehow managed to keep up a semblance of cheeriness. Paul always had a smile on his face.
There was a lot of work to be done. First there were rules, boundaries, to be set.
Paul smoked, but we didn’t, so the first thing was that there would be no smoking in the house. The second was that as long as he was under our roof, the use of any drug, including dope, was strictly forbidden.
We tried to provide a certain amount of structure, such as rules on keeping his room tidy and washing put away. Everyday stuff that we believed would help us live with him, and keep him grounded.
My husband was a health and fitness devotee and trained with weights every day in the local gym. He decided that it would be good for Paul if, once he had recovered a little more and was feeling stronger, he joined him on his daily workouts. The intention was to try to make Paul more aware of his health, the idea being that when you feel healthy, you are more inclined to want to continue feeling that way.
Poor Paul! As if it wasn’t enough for him that I wouldn’t allow him to smoke in the house (he had to face the freezing cold winter mornings and evenings dressed up from head to toe to smoke outside). No! Garth took the poor boy off to the gym and worked him as hard as he could. Paul was almost crippled for the first few days, but he endured it all with great aplomb, as usual, and he survived.
I was optimistic and determined, but I was also afraid. I was afraid that he would connect with the ‘wrong crowd’, and I was very apprehensive about what I would be faced with if he started using again. I was reading the Tough Love book, but I knew that putting the theory into practice wouldn’t be as easy. I prayed the day would not come that I would have to do that – that I would have to fight him.
Paul started to look good again after two to three weeks of gym and three hearty meals a day. He had put on weight, and he had his colour back. His physical state was accompanied by an attitude to match and a delightful sense of humour, and he began working in the restaurant as a waiter.
At that time, one would never have looked at him and believed he had recently overdosed.
Paul enjoyed the restaurant. He was conscientious, never missing work, and the customers and staff enjoyed him. He made a great waiter. He seemed happy and to be coping well in general. Always friendly and easy to have around, he was getting on very well with Garth, and our two little boys, aged five and three, loved him to bits. He loved playing with them and they hung around him like two little shadows.
He attended a Bible study class with me once a week (by choice!), and he spent a good deal of time with my minister, chatting and playing guitar. The minister was young – twenty-three – so he and Paul were able to relate easily from the point of view of both being young and ‘modern’.
Over time he also made some friends. Our restaurant had a pub section, and Kroonstad being the small town that it was, people of all ages ‘hung out’ there. There were some who I didn’t think were so good,
though – at least in the sense that I knew they smoked dope. (I knew because it was small-town common knowledge, and my younger brother had been at school with some of them.)
I worried about these friends, but rather than insist that Paul not see them, I threatened them to within an inch of their lives. They were not to allow drugs around him. I was very determined to keep Paul clean, and I told them that nobody, but nobody, was going to compromise my efforts.
I must say, with regard to this, the friends were great – or scared!
Everything looked good for a while, and it seemed as if my optimism hadn’t been unfounded.
Then his behaviour began to change. It was so subtle at first. There was nothing you could pin down exactly – he just didn’t seem quite the same. Then he began ‘sleeping in’ a great deal, often till past midday. He also started coming home later and later at night. He stopped going to gym, and began skipping meals. Some nights I would find him camped out in the lounge, as if he hadn’t been able to make it to his room.
He was very convincing when we questioned him about what he was up to – of course, he was just spending time with his new friends. I knew something wasn’t quite right, but he denied that he was using again. I guess I went into a kind of denial. Paul was so conveniently believable too. I didn’t want to face the possibility that he might be using again. It was too painful to contemplate that possibility because the prospect of having to face failure after everything had been going so well – well, that was huge.
So I prayed, and put it all down to youth and attributed everything to simple common-or-garden late nights …
… until the day I decided to pack his washing away for him, and came across bloodstains in the groin area of a pair of his underpants.