Ex-addict Charlotte happy to be alive!
AT a time when addiction to drugs and alcohol are at an all-time high in Zimbabwe, former drug addict Charlotte Nkala quit for the sake of her 12-year-old daughter. The 29-year-old from Nkulumane in Bulawayo said she hasn’t been there for her kid.
Charlotte has been clean for two years. Her destructive relationship with alcohol and drugs began in her late teens with nights out drinking with friends. But it got worse as she got older and was thrown out of the family home by her parents.
“When my parents got tired of my behaviour and threw me out of the house, everything just sort of fell away. I moved to South Africa to try and fend for myself but that didn’t work out too well for me. The minute I arrived there, I realised I had nowhere to stay and very little money. I hooked up with some girls I had met on the streets and I found myself doing awkward jobs,” says Charlotte.
Eventually she found herself in a nasty, sinister place, she says, describing it as “the madness”.
“I felt like I was in my own movie, because I was the star when I was drunk or high. The ego. Obsessive Charley. Controlling Charley.”
She would eventually hook up with a Nigerian drug dealer. After a while she tried to get clean, found herself a proper job at a restaurant in Midrand and moved out of the flat she was sharing with her drug dealer boyfriend.
But soon she discovered she was pregnant and fell back in with the wrong crowd and lost her job, her home and a budding relationship with a workmate. She also nearly lost her liberty.
In February 2020, she was arrested on suspicion of drug possession and it was while in the police cell she realised she had to change her life to avoid ending up in prison.
“That place is the devil,” says Charlotte, pointing at a row of pubs and bars in a picture on her phone and remembering her nights on beer and drugs.
“It depends what side of the street you want to be on, doesn’t it? I get flashbacks of me being kicked out of one of the bars because I’m too high and pissed. I was destroying people who loved and cared for me, but I was also destroying myself in the process.”
Fortunately for her, the police didn’t charge her — instead officers gave her a local drug and alcohol support service leaflet. Charlotte already knew about such places, as she had stopped drinking and doing drugs a few times before. But this time, she felt it would be different and got in touch.
She said she wants to teach her daughter good values, responsibility, respect, honesty and diligence.
“I did not see a mother through the image I became due to drugs. I wanted to recover from the eight years I spent doing drugs,” said Charlotte, who used to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, dagga and later crystal meth and crack cocaine.
Charlotte said her addiction started after she gave birth to her daughter when she was 17.
“I felt pressure from being a teenage mother. Drugs were the only way to forget my problems. I didn’t know that I was destroying my life and losing my dignity,” said Charlotte.
She said her life was saved after a former classmate found her high in a local night club and about to leave the bar with two men.
“I learnt to accept my past, forgive myself, have faith in myself, move forward with my life and also believe that change is constant,” she said.
Charlotte said she has been clean for two years and loves every moment of bonding with her daughter.
“I am not going back and I love who I have become as a mother. Life is wonderful. I am happy and my child is doing well at school. I also hope to be a peer educator one day and help young people with drug issues. Rehabilitation centres are good for withdrawal and receiving medication,” said Charlotte.
She plans to go back to school next year to complete her O-Levels and perhaps even go on to study nursing.
“This will help me study nursing so I can take care of the sick,” said Charlotte.