New hope for whoonga addicts
More affordable rehabilitation centre to open in KwaZulu-Natal
IT’S A drop in the ocean. However, a drug rehabilitation centre scheduled to open in the new year will give addicts unable to afford private health care the opportunity to become clean.
Currently, KwaZulu-Natal has only two state facilities and a huge drug-abusing population, with many addicted to the heroin-based “whoonga” cocktail, the cheapest on the market.
“That’s hopelessly inadequate for the numbers that need rehabilitation,” said Roman Catholic Archbishop Wilfred Napier, who has reluctantly allowed the new centre to be named after him for the sake of fundraising.
The Napier Centre will be housed in Verulam in the old Ekukhanyeni Mission buildings which have been lying idle. After it opens in February or March, it will accommodate 14 male patients.
“It’s a drop in the ocean,” Napier told The Independent on Saturday, adding that it was hoped it could prompt others to mushroom.
“We hope it will develop other droplets and we make a connection. But the drug industry is so well organised I would say that if we can help one person it would be victory enough.”
Napier said the decision to establish it was “probably the biggest act of faith I have made in my life.
“The odds are so stacked, you have to be crazy to do it or be a man of faith,” he said.
He added that he had accompanied a husband and wife doctor-nurse team to treat “whoonga” addicts in the Dalton Hostel area.
“One of the side-effects of ‘whoonga’ is that users’ skins become sensitive to water and they don’t like to wash, creating a body odour. “At clinics, other patients don’t like this and push them off the benches, so this doctor and his wife decided to go to where they are and treat them there.”
He called their work “perfect acts of kindness that were very touching”.
After some people affected by “whoonga” told their stories, the idea was born to set up the new centre.
Ekukhanyeni was chosen because it was isolated enough to make it more difficult for drug suppliers to reach the patients.
A crucial part of the rehabilitation process will be integrating patients back into their families who they often would have stolen from to feed their addictions, leaving home on bad terms. “We’ll get families to visit and see their progress.”
One sign of whoonga use is that users start off having a colossal amount of energy that is put to constructive use, for instance working in the garden to their parents’ approval.
“They start off wondering how they kick him out of home for being a drug user when he is being so good. Then they start losing everything (that he steals for money to buy whoonga) and they say ‘Son, you’ve got to go’.”
Vocational training would be offered at the centre to give them skills to offer their families once they were back home.
Napier described the drug scourge as being “like a demon, the type that can only be cast out with prayer and fasting”.
Napier said the church had made overtures to local health officials and the eThekwini Municipality to come on board, and hoped a state hospital would perform detoxing.
“Hopefully, we shall be able to convince municipalities it will be in the interests of their citizens.”
He said it was the role of the church to step in where there were gaps and then move on to the next need when the state had the means to deal with the problem.
From a preventative point of view, Napier said marriage preparation was focused on avoiding family breakdowns and making sure couples felt an overpowering obligation to make sure their children had the best homes possible.
“So when the kids are tempted, they think they are precious in the eyes of God and they cannot allow their lives to be destroyed by things like drugs.”