Mindanaotoday.com | 137 PWUDs submit to rehab in centers
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – For six months to one year, 137 persons who use drugs (PWUD) but had decided to give up the addictive substances, are attending sessions in health agency-run and community-based rehabilitation and treatment facilities in Cagayan de Oro City.
But the recovery process, after having been hooked to regulated and prohibited drugs, takes time, requiring peer support and acceptance from the public, according to two resource persons in a health forum at an uptown mall on Thursday, November 24.
Ninety of the PWUDs, mostly persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), have been enrolled at the Department of Health-10 Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in Puerto village, while 47 have been under the care of Community-based Drug Rehabilitation Program (CBDRP) of Carmen, the city’s most populated village.
Erwin Rommel Lingad, DOH-10-TRC Cagayan de Oro’s health education and promotion officer-designate, said that being a health facility they screen all those coming in into the center, but they have no police power over those who leave unnoticed.
Lingad said it’s up for the Court and police to run after PWUDs who escape after they were freed by virtue of a plea-bargaining privilege granted to them.
He said staying at the DOH-TRC is not free of charge, hence families pay every month for a member they support for rehabilitation from drug addiction.
The Center provides food, lodging, use of sports facilities and amenities, therapy sessions, health and medical services for clients.
Those released, deemed recovered, are turned over to the local government which, the Center overseer said should be provided with after-care support services, including livelihood training and opportunities.
A former PWUD who, for the past six years, has been persuading former peers to free themselves from drugs, said 181 have “graduated” from CBDRP of Carmen, but it doesn’t mean they have totally recovered.
The craving, she said, will still be there and avoiding a relapse is a constant challenge for former PWUDs.
“Cacai” (not her real name), now in her 30s, said she gave up selling fish at a public market so that she could help liberate those held captive by drugs, receiving only honorarium for counselling services out of personal experiences and struggles the past six years.
The CBDRP of Carmen has 47 clients for its Batch 5 who have agreed to undergo therapeutic sessions with peers every Sunday for at least six months.
Speaking in Bisayan, she admitted drugs (shabu) taste good when she had her first, out of curiosity, at 21 years old because she wondering why it was easy for her to sell, compared to selling fish.
But her craving for the substance – and to experience more from it – led her to spend her mom’s sale of the day selling fish from the market. Thus, her eventual realization she was going nowhere and nothing is going right.
Cacai said she had a very supportive spouse who was behind her rehabilitation and treatment, adding that looking back she should have been checked on her changes in behaviour and her way of thinking.
Being an alcoholic, she said it was her curiosity that led her to experiment how she would feel once she takes the substance.
“Everything starts with drinking (alcoholic beverages), smoking (cigarettes), and peer pressure,” Cacai recalled, other than her curiosity and testing what would be the effects. “Once hooked, you do not know something is wrong.” (MT)
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