Hold my hand

He opened his eyes in a dazed stupor and gazed blankly at the white bed sheets, white wall paint, white curtains and the white paint on the edge of the bed. It was all blurring. His sight was merging the surroundings in a never ending maze of white. After being stuck in the whirlwind void of the moment he shivered and strained to turn his head towards the right and the milky white rays of the sun seemed to irritate him. His parched lips along with the dead white of the skin made him look like a gothic mummy with the skin still on. He again closed his eyes and tried to escape from it all. But where can a person go when his inside is as scary as his outside. Like a scared kid stuck in torrid rains on a dark lonely night in the woods. Now all this kid would want is the safe confines of a home. But when he comes across a silhouette of a lonely house in the woods, he don't want to go there. The thought of going inside that house with arms of fears stretching to take him in their cadaverous bosom is no better than the grotesque forest. He was feeling restless. He was feeling restless in his skin. And then someone came inside and he tried to recognize and suddenly everything came back. As smoothly as he had lost it with the same ease the memory came back. The guy standing was Mohan. Mohan had got him admitted to the Detox and had helped him through the troubled times. It had been just four days that he had known Mohan but it seemed as if he had known him for years. Mohan smiled the way he almost does. A very warm and affectionate smile that is so contagious that you have to be a stone or a rock not to smile back. But still all his smiles were so distinct and so assuring that they talk to you. This smile was telling him, hey you pulled it through, I told you so that its all gonna be ok. And this is all that he wanted to hear that it was all over. It all had started around four years back. He was a young engg. passout with high flying dreams. He was so charged up and holding so tight that he caved in. He started with the normal stuff and before he knew he had graduated to chemicals. He was sniffing, he was popping, he was chasing as if there was no tomorrow. For him there was no day and no night coz everything was just same. He had lost the sense of time. He would get up, powder his nose and drop off. It was all a never-ending cycle. He was weighing 85 pounds and was a walking nightmare. And then gradually the effects started showing. His body could take it no more. He had stopped getting the instant gratifying high which he used to get. He increased the intake but still the high evaded him. He had been living in psychedelic trance for the past four years and now he realized how far had he come. As they say that every addict needs to hit his rock bottom to surface back. And every one has his own rock bottom. He hit his rock bottom when he found himself crawled near a lamp post in an open market with agonizing pains sending ripples of a thousand knife stabs up his abdomen. He was shivering, shrieking, trembling, stammering, crying and PRAYING for it all to be over. Next day in the morning with trembling fingers he typed the golden words on his keyboard. "DRUGS+DETOX" and he was on the web page of an NGO who is majorly into helping addicts who have a will to go clean. There was this number flashing on the right hand side of the web page. He dialed the number and a warm voice greeted him from the other side. In a stammering stutter he said that he wanted to get some help. The voice on the other side did not interrupt him and listened very patiently and then sensing that he was through, the voice said for the first time, "It's all gonna be ok" These words had a hypnotizing effect on him. He could feel the words, he could touch the words, he could smell the words and he could understand the words. The guy on the other side requested him to come to their meeting in the evening. The meeting was at a secluded school. He reached there and with much effort finally entered the meeting. There he met Mohan and Mohan hugged him. It was the kind of hugs that only few can relate to. Mohan hugged him and it was a strong embrace, which lasted for 2-3 minutes, and after a couple of seconds of resisting to this strange tradition he finally gave in and was at ease. The hug was very reassuring. Instead of giving him feel good rhetoric, Mohan allowed the hug to do the talking. Mohan himself was an addict and now was clean for 6 years. He had just celebrated his sixth anniversary and was working with another NGO which was fighting for prisoners rights in AFRICA. After the meeting he and Mohan along with some other fellow " clean or reformed addicts" accompanied him and they checked in a nearby Detox center again run by a fellow member. It was all very reassuring. All fellow addicts who had all gone through the same pain and now were clean and used to meet on a daily basis to celebrate the essence of life surrounded him. The first step to being clean is to acknowledge the fact the one is actually an addict. It comes hard and not everyone can come to terms with this harsh naked truth, leave aside acknowledging it. That day at the pavement, made him acknowledge the fact that he in fact was an addict. The next step is to say to yourself that” I will be clean today. I will not do drugs today. You need to take a day at a time. All those who said I won’t ever do drug again have failed except a few. So you need to remain clean for a day and then day after and then day after. He now lives his life like a normal human being enjoying the beautiful kick from a simple cup of coffee! And life sure is beautiful when you don’t get up in the morning with the same headache and the same cramps. An addict has just three goals in his life, where to get the money to score, where to buy and where to use. An addict’s life revolves around these three major tasks and in the end an addict dies pursuing his tasks. There are only three ends to an addicts life: jail, mental asylum or DEATH. He chose none of them and went with LIFE instead. Doing drugs an addict screws himself in all circles of life.. Relationships, zilch. Money, zilch. Spirituality, zilch. Ambitions, zilch. He himself, zilch. Its good to be able to enjoy the rains in their pristine beauty, its great to feel the cold winters, relish the milky white sunlight, feel the emotions in their innocent form and it sure is good when someone can count on you. It’s indeed good to be clean. This post is for a friend who is going through tough times. Dude, you need to hang in there and its gonna be fine. Have faith in yourself. God bless.