by Nikki Ridley
The walls of denial and hope came crashing down.
When Paul’s behaviour had first begun to change, I had done some further research into Wellconal, and I had been in communication with Paul’s mother regarding what to look for and how to interpret his behaviour.
In addition to the change in sleeping patterns, she had told me to watch out for yellow hands and red eyes (along with a constant supply of eye drops), things disappearing from the house, and blood on his underpants, which would indicate that he was shooting up in his groin.
So there it was.
I was devastated, not only that he seemed to be using again, but because by that time I was well versed in the extremely discouraging statistics for recovery from Wellconal addiction, which were not far above nil.
That afternoon I confronted him in the kitchen. I expected him to deny it, to have to drag it out of him, or to have to find more proof, but he never denied it.
He just came out and admitted that he was using again. Just like that. I really hadn’t expected such blatant honesty, and was quite taken aback.
He told me that as soon as he had earned enough money during the week, he’d hike to JHB, a distance of 195 kilometres, to his supplier, then hike back. I never asked him where he used. To this day I don’t know. It must have been in public toilets.
Not in my house, I’m sure …
Disappointed is not the right word for how I felt. Man, that feeling is hard to explain. Crushed.
I thought we had come so far.
I begged him to tell me the name of the dirt bag who was supplying him. In my naivety I thought that I would simply hand him over to the police and he would be off the street … and that it would be a bit better, I guess. One less dealer.
He refused. He said that these people were dangerous and he would not take the chance of putting me in danger or me putting myself in danger. I never asked what he thought this guy would do. I just took his word for it. It must have been the way he said it. I felt so frustrated. So angry and helpless. Name it – I felt it. We all felt it, and I began to really understand what his parents had been going through. I also, however, understood their need to just ‘cope’. There was no room for anger and disappointment. Those feelings were there, but they were so utterly useless in the face of something that was clearly bigger than the best one could do, and they couldn’t be permitted to take over one’s life.
I understood the helplessness. I understood the worry that he would self-destruct and that there was nothing anyone could do to prevent it.
One couldn’t stop the dealers. One couldn’t stop him. I felt that the only option was to pray.
He cried that day, in my kitchen, and he promised that he would try not to use again. Try. He said that it was so hard. He tried to explain it to me by using my dieting as a metaphor. He told me to think of something that I craved to eat when on a diet, and then to multiply that feeling by a million – and that that was still little in comparison to the way his body ached – hungered – for Wellconal.
I kind of got the idea, but I refused to back off. I was not going to watch Paul kill himself or, for that matter, hurt my aunt and uncle any more than he already had. I also knew that they were worried that he would begin stealing from us, and put us under financial strain, just as he had them. They didn’t want that, and that fear was adding to what they already had to deal with. They no doubt felt a certain amount of responsibility for his actions. How could they not, even if they weren’t responsible? He was their son.
I told them. I had to. I had promised them that I would keep them informed of Paul’s progress – or lack thereof, if that was to be the case. It was hard to tell them, though. I didn’t want to hurt them, but I was obliged to keep my word.
It was all very unpleasant, for all of us.
They didn’t seem at all surprised, and I realised that this was just another in a long list of disappointments for them. It was decided that the best thing would be for him to remain in Kroonstad – a decision made jointly and based on the fact that it would still be harder for him to get hold of the stuff if he stayed than if he went back to Johannesburg.
We decided to try again, and this time to be a little less trusting and a little tougher with him.
I made it clear to Paul that I would not tolerate him continuing to use drugs in the town where I lived – any more than I would have tolerated it in my house. Kroonstad is a small town. My husband and I had a good business and small children …
I also told him that I would have him arrested if I caught him using again.
Paul responded with humility and regret that he had hurt us. He said that he didn’t want to hurt us, because we had been so good to him and to his parents. He promised to try his absolute best to stay out of trouble this time.
He was so charming, as always, and he had that smile – the kind that could melt ice. Even after being let down, it was so easy to want to believe in him. He seemed so earnest!
My determination and optimism returned.
This time we would get it right. We could get it right – we just needed to keep a better eye on him, and Kroonstad was so small that it was the perfect place to keep tabs on someone. Whatever he did, or if he went missing, someone would be bound to have seen or heard something. There was a way. We just had to keep trying.
Paul then decided that he should move out – get a flat of his own, and that way he would have to be more self-reliant and responsible. He would have to fend for himself. He reasoned that as he would have to use his money for rent, he would not have enough left to indulge his habit. He convinced us that he needed to fight this fight alone. He had put us through enough. He needed to take his life into his own hands and stop relying on others to bail him out when he messed up, etc., etc.
I still cannot believe I fell for this story!
Paul pulled the wool right over my eyes. Right over. I really believed that he was sincere, and (was it my thought or his?) that to be totally self-reliant was exactly what he needed to pull himself together. To take the hard road … no time for destructive self-indulgence if he was dealing with rent, electricity bills and such.
I agreed to help him find a flat, and we soon did. It was a rather grotty one, but he seemed happy with it. He was very excited at the idea of this ‘new beginning’, and so eager to have his own ‘spot’.
We decided to pay him monthly rather than weekly in order to help him budget for his rent, and we thought that we could keep a ‘reasonable eye’ on him.
However, it wasn’t long before he started coming around with stories. He needed some cash for this and that. Please could he have an advance? I always said no.
He responded by making other arrangements. For example, he stole our speakers, and my minister’s guitar – the very one he had played at Bible study. He pawned a door from his flat for R50. All while he was still working and asking for cash.
We couldn’t pin the thefts on him, and of course he always denied having been responsible when something went missing, but a few weeks after he moved out, I started getting calls from a local pharmacist questioning why Paul was in there more than once a week to get syringes. His excuse to her had been that he was using them to treat chronically infected tonsils.
I thanked God that day that I lived in a small town and that everyone wanted to know everyone else’s business.
By this stage there had been a million stories about advances, requiring a million rebuffs from me, so I called his father. My uncle decided to drive to Kroonstad to try to talk some sense into him.
By the time he arrived, however, Paul had disappeared. We couldn’t find him anywhere. We thought he had most likely hitched back to Jo’burg, and that his father could well have passed him on the way.
Uncle Mark looked washed out. He was very stressed, and worried about Val, who was in Durban visiting Paul’s older brother. She didn’t know that her husband was in Kroonstad, and he didn’t want her to know. They had both reached the end … but when i
s it the end when it is your son? When is it the end when it is your child? It doesn’t go away. So here he was, on his own, because it was hopeless, and he knew it, and she would have known it too, but he had to try.
My heart ached for them both.
With Paul missing, and the opportunity to talk to him gone, my uncle, pushed as far as he was willing to go, told us that when Paul came back we should do whatever it took. The time for talking and pleading was over.
He told me that Paul had a five-year suspended sentence for theft, and that I should get someone to lay a charge of theft against him.
Perhaps a five-year stint in prison would sort him out. He wouldn’t be able to use and he would have to learn a trade.
Then my uncle left.
I had also had enough by this stage. I had warned Paul that if I found out he had used again I would have him arrested. Of course, when Paul reappeared he promised to clean up his act. He looked at us with these lovely big repentant blue eyes and promised to try. He turned on that marvellous charm that had served him so well in the past … so sorry, so sincere, so helpless … so impossible to stay angry with!
His charm, his sense of humour, his happy, laughing manner that appeared never to take anything too seriously (and quietly mock you for doing so) – this had always been his ticket out of trouble. He would convince you and lay waste your defences, then leave you kicking yourself for falling for his tricks.
Not this time.
I arranged with the SAP drug squad SUNNOP to be on stand-by for me.
I then arranged with the pharmacist that she call me the minute Paul came in for a syringe – which she did, after only a day or two.
I made the call.
SUNNOP insisted that I go to Paul’s flat and knock, as he would most likely be reluctant to open the door to anyone else.
It was a dreadful day. I felt like such a traitor, but I knew that if I didn’t do this, he would end up dead – sooner or later. He would kill himself with his addiction. I knew enough about pinks to know this, and that Paul’s apparently good physical state was no indication of the nearness of death, because the end could be so sudden. You didn’t necessarily just waste away till it was over. I knew that, and it scared me. He was still making it to work, for the most part. It would have been so easy to continue being naive about the outcome, but I refused to succumb to that temptation.
So on that dreadful day that I turned traitor to try to be a saviour, I knocked. He opened and they bust in.
Paul didn’t even get a chance to speak to me, nor I to him. It was so quick, and the agents would not let him speak to me. I think they knew how hard it was for me.
They didn’t find any drugs, but they found used syringes, and I guess that this was sufficient grounds for arrest, in addition to the physical evidence on Paul himself – his very punctured groin.
They took him away and I went home. It was done.
I felt so sad, and doubt began to creep in. Had I done the right thing? I kept reminding myself that Paul would have ended up dead sooner or later, but it didn’t console me much. I had a very heavy heart that day. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to have turned out.
I spent that first night fighting self-recrimination. I knew that I had to pull myself together and visit him the next day, and that when I did that it would not do to show any doubt. It would be bad enough, and to show a crack in the armour would only make it worse.
They took him to Kroonstad Correctional Services, so I was able to visit him easily. I needed to do that. I needed to see that he was okay. Every day.
At first he was mad at me. He didn’t want to speak to me. He didn’t even want to look at me.
I remember trying to explain my actions to him. I reminded him of the many warnings I had given him, and that I had done it because I cared very deeply for him and for his parents.
He never said much during those first visits, except to ask me for chocolates and cigarettes. He said that would help him.
After the second or third visit he started to look dire. He started wearing his jumper hood over his head and he’d sit there on the other side of the glass from me, not speaking, and shaking. The dark rings around his eyes became very pronounced and he went deathly pale. He was sick.
Withdrawal.
It was the first time I had seen it, and it was very disturbing. Days went by like this, and it was so sad to see someone usually cheery and animated just sitting like that, depressed and morose. Then came the mood swings, veering wildly from depression to okay, and back, but still with this angry, reproachful silence.
When he started to ‘come around’, I showered him with chocolates and fruit. His mother said it helped with the detoxification process.
When he was first incarcerated, and still awaiting trial, he told the prison psychologist that if he had to stay in prison he would kill himself. He also told her that he knew how to get drugs in prison, that he would be able to get anything there that he could get on the street, and that he would make no effort whatsoever to stay clean.
With regard to the suicide threat, we knew that it was just not in Paul’s character to seriously consider that … but they didn’t. We also knew him well enough to know what game he was playing. Paul was no fool – he knew the ins and outs of prisons, and he clearly knew that if he played the part of a suicidal person he stood a better chance of not being sentenced at all.
He was so manipulative that it was easy for him to convince the prison psychologist that he was too unstable to cope with a prison sentence.
He just wanted to get out of there. We had a talk with the psychologist, and she requested information on his previous evaluations to back up our argument.
During the three weeks before his trial date, we got hold of pages and pages of evaluations from the psychologists who had dealt with Paul in all the rehabs he had been to. They all stated that Paul showed no suicidal tendencies.
While Paul did everything that he could to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, we counter-attacked. We wanted him to stay in there, and so we presented the evaluations to the magistrate. We wanted any sentence – as long as it kept him off the streets long enough to learn a trade and learn to live without drugs. We didn’t believe that he would get drugs in prison as easily as he would be able to on the street, although we didn’t discount the fact that there were prison networks. It would be harder for him, and we would be able to keep an eye on him.
If he got out, he’d be gone. Beyond our knowledge and our help. That’s what he wanted. There was no possibility of him sticking around after I’d had him arrested.
We wanted him to stay in prison. It was the only way that we could imagine he had a chance to recover fully from his addiction. It was, in our opinion, his only chance – however harsh it might be for him. It was also our only chance of not losing him for good.
On the day of his trial, Paul climbed out of the prison van in high spirits. I think he knew what was going to happen. He had been through the whole process before. As for me, I was sure that the magistrate would be on our side. Naivety, I guess. It was not to be.
He asked Paul if he would go back to rehab, and Paul replied, in his clever, innocent way: ‘No, sir, nobody can help me but myself. I have hurt so many special people who love me. I know now to clean up my act myself.’
To my horror, the magistrate replied: ‘Mr Bateman, you seem to have learnt your lesson and you are mature enough to do the responsible thing. YOU ARE FREE TO GO.’
Just like that. Paul was gone, and I was left in shock. They didn’t care! They didn’t care that he could go out there and die. They told me that it cost the state too much to keep people like him in prison. They were hopeless cases. So it had nothing to do with the magistrate believing him. They just couldn’t be bothered to assist in the rehabilitation of people like Paul.
To my even greater horror, the magistrate then said that Paul was being released because it was his first offence for drug use.
Theft! H
e should have been arrested for theft in order for him to have to serve his suspended sentence.
I couldn’t reach his parents, as they were away at the time, so I called Paul’s brother, and he was as horrified as I was that he’d gone. He was also afraid that he would go back to their parents’ house to help himself to anything of value while they were gone. He’d be on his way back into Hillbrow, and he’d want a fix, because that’s all he had left if he’d chosen to run, but he’d have no problem making a detour if it was worthwhile.
That was the last I saw of Paul, up until the day I visited his fragile body in hospital shortly after he had come out of his coma.
I have repeatedly referred to Paul’s cheery nature, as I’m sure have others.
How does one reconcile the image of a manipulative, self-destructive (and self-destructing) drug addict with that of an eminently likeable, innately happy young man?
Perhaps the best way to explain it is simply by recounting something that happened when I visited Paul after his overdose.
When I first saw Paul in the hospital, he looked extremely frail. I remember being shocked at the sight of him. He had come out of his coma but was heavily sedated, and he was sleeping when I walked into the room.
I sat with him for a while, until a nurse came in and gently woke him up.
As he sat up, I was even more shocked. He looked worse than he’d looked lying down. He looked damaged. One of his eyes looked strange – as if it were hanging loose and sunken in at the same time.
‘Hey, cuz,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Dale. How’re you doing?’
He sat up further and lifted his head, as if he needed to look down his nose to see me properly, even though he was blind.
‘GREAT!’ he replied, and smiled.
Under the Bridge Downtown
Paul
I HIKED BACK TO JO’BURG FROM KROONSTAD. I HAD DONE that trip so many times to buy pinks, but I remember this particular trip because of how I felt.
As I sat in the cab of the truck that had stopped to pick me up, I wondered if it would ever end. I’d been happy in Kroonstad, and I’d messed up.