FORMER movie actor and model Lito Gruet, a reformed drug addict, shared his journey to recovery with the recovering drug addicts at Better Days Ahead Recovery Center in Barangay Villamonte, Bacolod City.
Gruet, a true-blooded Bacolodnon, was here Wednesday, April 18, to continue his advocacy and also for a family gathering.
In an exclusive interview the former actor, Gruet said he has been helping other people who need his advice and counseling as he was a former drug addict for 16 years.
“It is my way of repaying God for my salvation and for giving me a second chance to live,” he said.
Gruet was once an exclusive Pitoy Moreno model and was considered as one of the top 10 male models in the country in his prime years.
He started doing movies and commercials. He spent a glamorous life but in between was marred by so many failures when he started mixing his successful career with the use of drugs.
“No matter how rich, successful and educated you are, everybody falls down with the use of illegal drugs,” Gruet said.
Gruet has once served as a director of Dare Rehabilitation Center in Cavite for 10 years but it was closed in 2011.
The reason why he left for Hong Kong was to join his wife Stella, who is a sister of actress Chanda Romero.
“I felt this longing to continue my advocacy. Even in Hong Kong, I get invited to do drug abuse talks for our overseas contract workers (OFWs) there. I figured out that the best way to continue my advocacy is through the social media. I post regularly on Facebook, all my personal experiences and I don’t hold back. My approach is different because I believed that God used my greatest weakness and turned it into my greatest strength,” Gruet said.
He added: “Once you are completely recovered and your intention is to help, it does not become shameful anymore.
“I used to sleep on the streets, shoplift, living in the slums and was hanging around with criminals. I would sleep along Roxas Boulevard and nowhere to go and if I get hungry, I just go the nearest mall and shoplift chocolates to eat. Those were during my drugs days because I was completely broke,” he recalled.
He added he was jailed so many times where he was almost salvaged by a drug syndicate who accused him of stealing.
Gruet said that his turning point was when he was already stealing from his mother who was then very sick and dying of cancer.
“And I still managed to steal money from her medication. At the point, among all the crazy things that I experienced, it was only that point that I acquired a sense of guilt. In those times,” he said.
“I was caught, jailed, was in the newspaper. I was really having a hard time. I was already sleeping in parked jeepneys. So, I felt the guilt that time. That was the only time that I listened to my uncle to try rehab because I didn’t believe in rehab. That it would help me. Most addicts think that they are better than rehab. I had my doubts but because of my guilt, I just wanted to appease them just to say that at least I tried,” he added.
He added: “So, I agreed, thinking that it was just a process but in the end, I already accepted the fact that I would die as an addict because I was getting very sick already. I had so many ailments – hypertension, cystitis, a bladder infection, I was borderline diabetic. I had gout all at the same time. I was already deteriorating to the point where I said that if I would die an addict, so be it.”
The former actor told the young people not to get into illegal drugs “because that is the greatest mistake you would ever have because you will be giving up a normal, beautiful and peaceful life to a life that is chaotic and self-destructive.”
Anti-illegal drug campaign
Many have questioned the method of President Rodrigo Duterte on his anti-illegal drug campaign, he said.
“But coming from an addict, I have been there and I have seen how even children being sold to buy drugs by their own parents, children are prostituted, being used as drug pushers at the age of five. They live in a house where they are all addicts. And the child is also growing up that way, being asked to get drugs for the uncle. That is what a lot of people do not know,” he said.
He said he believed that an addict should be helped. He does not conform to extrajudicial killings. “But all addicts need help. Give them a second chance, just like me, I was given the second chance. It is really very fulfilling to help. This is the reason why I get to visit many drug rehabilitation centers to know the kind of program they have. I cannot recommend a rehab that I don’t know and how it is being run.”
He also asked the parents to never take for granted their children because the moment they step out of their home, they are already vulnerable.
“They get influenced especially peer pressure. They learn to take drugs from friends. Friends are the first pusher.”
Prior to engaging drugs, Gruet said he was hanging out with the rich people and really had a good life. But when he started using drugs, he ended up hanging out with the criminals.
“It was normal and not scary for me anymore to do criminal acts like stealing and going with the syndicate. Drug addicts go through loss sense of morality and their conscience.
It becomes normal to do criminal acts. What we do is a crime,” he recalled.
Gruet now is grateful to God for giving him a second life.
“Not so many people get this chance. Now that I have recovered, it is now my life’s mission to help as many people as I can. Effectively, the social media has been helping me. That is the fulfillment that I get now.”
Meanwhile, Better Days Ahead Recovery Center director Reniel Bermejo thanked Gruet for visiting the recovering addicts who undergo rehabilitation and treatment at their center.
Gruet shared his life with them to give them hope that life is worth living.