SAM* (not his real name), a drug addict for 18 years, said his family had left him. Who would stay, after he beat every one of his live-in partners who had tried to stop him from taking drugs?
“I duped all my neighbors. Even the barangay captain’s brother, I swindled of P2,000,” he said.
Then in August 2016, Sam heard there was food at the drug rehabilitation program of Barangay Subangdaku, Mandaue City. He figured if he could eat for free, he could save his money for drugs. So he showed up.
But when he did, “gipatuyok mi sa oval sa San Roque. Then gipa-Zumba. (They made us jog on the oval at San Roque Parish, then do Zumba.) Then there was a Narcotics Anonymous 12-step meeting.”
Slowly, he changed. Clean for more than a year now, Sam said: “The program taught me how to handle cravings. Now I’m building a new family. I don’t beat my partner anymore. I now understand that she would not be angry with me if I had not done anything wrong.”
Johnny*, on the other hand, felt compelled to join Labang because his father works for the barangay. In denial, he had not even considered himself an addict, he said.
But then he learned to listen and be humble. The sessions allowed him to share feelings he couldn’t talk to his parents about.
“Here, they understand. Ni-agi man pud sila og kawat (Like me, they also used to steal),” he said.
Clean for seven months now, he now sees more clearly that when one turns to drugs, “Imbis na maluwas, matiwas na hinuon (instead of being saved, one is finished).”
Sam and Johnny were among those attending the 12-step meeting of Labang last week. Leading that session was a recovering drug user himself, father-of-six Robert*, whose eldest son, also a user, was attending the session with him.
Lahat Bangon (Labang for short) is the community-based rehab program of the Ugnayan ng Barangay at Simbahan (Ubas) to help Oplan Tokhang surrenderers in their rehabilitation and reintegration in society.
The Subangdaku program has had three batches of surrenderers.
Challenges
Good intentions notwithstanding, the program faces challenges.
In Barangay Marigondon, Lapu-Lapu City, where the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish had held a big kickoff last August with 60 surrenderers from Barangays Agus, Basak, Marigondon and Suba-Basbas in attendance, the sessions in the church have stopped.
Fr. Carmelo Diola, member of the Ubas National Technical Working Group, said the problem was with the local government unit (LGU), because the church was ready.
“The Archbishop and mayor were there at the launch. We already gave a talk to 60 surrenderers from the four barangays during the launch. But in subsequent gatherings, the surrenderers no longer came. It was just a matter of bringing them to the parish,” he said.
Marigondon Barangay Councilor Jovito Espinosa said the surrenderers appreciated that they could hear former drug addicts share about their own encounters with drugs, but that the problem of feeding their families inevitably intruded.
“It was really hard for us to send surrenderers to the church because there were so many sessions,” he said in Cebuano. “They would have to go there after work when they were already tired. Maayo lagi og pareha ta og (It’s not as if we all have the same) life standard,” he said.
But he said the village provided over 20 surrenderers with its own activities, like “zumba, basketball tournament” and sessions on the ill effects of drugs; and some drug users had, on their own, stopped using drugs after discovering, when Tokhang interrupted their use, that it was possible to do so.
Espinosa admitted, however, that some users had returned to using drugs, though none had returned to selling them.
Not cooperative
In Barangay Basak, Barangay Captain Isabelito Damayla said he had “absorbed” the 26 surrenderers who used to attend sessions at the church.
He said what the church wanted was for the barangay to send 20-30 surrenderers who the barangay was not yet catering to, but that these other surrenderers didn’t want to go because they found the church too far and “la-inan sila nga dili ang barangay ang mo-handle (they weren’t comfortable that it was not the barangay that would handle the program).”
The ones the LGU “absorbed” continue with their program, meeting one to two hours on Fridays. It used to be thrice a week, he said. But after their drug test results improved, they reduced the number of sessions to once a week.
Damayla estimated that there were more than 2,000 drug users in his barangay.
For the whole Lapu-Lapu City, which has 30 barangays, however, only 3,814 people were listed as surrenderers, according to the Police Regional Office 7 said.
In Barangay Suba-Basbas, Barangay Captain Jose Tibon said 14 of the village’s 39 surrenderers joined the program but slowly stopped attending even if they could get free snacks there and the village provided a vehicle to bring them to the church for the sessions.
“So we just ran the program in the barangay,” he said.
But the surrenderers didn’t want to attend that either, even when told they would receive rice and canned goods during the monthly meetings. They sent representatives to collect the goods, though, which barangay personnel refused to give if the surrenderers themselves did not appear, Tibon said.
“They are not cooperative,” he said.
He heard that some had found the sessions repetitive, while others had returned to their vice. But what could they do when surrenderers could not be forced to attend the sessions?
Perhaps they could take a page from the playbook in Subangdaku where Delia*, 45, shared that after having failed to graduate with the first batch of Labangers in the village, she was persuaded to return because the people from the Labang Center kept going to her house to look for her.
Delia, who began taking drugs at 17 to shed her inhibitions as a sexy dancer at a club, said it was hard to stay sober with a husband who was also a drug addict and an alcoholic besides.
But on her second try at the program, she began attending the sessions daily. And through Labang, she said, she has become productive as she now operates a sari-sari store. (CTL)
(Part 3: Skills give recovering drug users a new start/Who are vulnerable to drug use?)