The Story An Addict Me Can Tell.

by Sharafadeen Muhsinah

 It was night and I already ate my dinner while I was ready to pray my last Rakats (obligatory prayer) for the day when I stumbled on a post of one my seniors in the university who studies nursing and was just posted to “ARO” for one of her practicals. The status goes thus “This parent or guardian who has forced their wards into the act of drug abuse needs to cursed and punished for their offence”. Truly this will be an act of activism to mostly all the people that viewed her status that night, but it wasn’t for me. We all see the world from different angles and our experiences in life define how we define and see things around us. Do all those parents or guardians really have to be cursed and punished? Is it all the time their fault? Or is it the child’s fault? These are questions that led me to feel the urge to tell the world one of the stories of my life.

      I am a kid whom my parents love the most amongst all kids and we all know mostly things that made parents do so. I performed excellently in school and have attended competitions and debates right from my secondary school, which none of my siblings has never attended in their life. I am always making my parents proud at school, outside school, at camps and seminars right from my secondary school days. My parents are not one of these parents that will make the other siblings be jealous of how they treat me. They treat us all with equity but some things are just meant to be seen.

   This love and hope grew stronger when I was announced as one of the best students that performed wonderful in JAMB and I already had my NECO result from SSS2. They all see me as a promising child despite the fact that I am not their first child. When I was younger when we used to live in a face me and face house, my parents faced a very sorrowful event which we were all aware of and it affected everyone of the family.

    We moved on with life and continue to survive with the aftermath of the tragic event that happened which I will love to tell you that it is a spiritual problem. We still continue doing fine, not until a memorable and an unforgettable night when another tragic event happened. We were offering our usual prayer that night when I surprisingly started speaking in gibberish and shouting which they call a spiritual attack. It was an unforgettable moment of my life. I was still with my sense but just doing these things without my power. I did and performed what I would never done with my only strength and I was at the same time shedding tears. I was crying furiously not because I felt bad for being possessed but I felt sad because of the way my darling mother and siblings were crying. My father, the strongest and the best man I have known on earth really proved his strength and intelligence that night. My dad did everything possible to calm me down and it worked by God’s grace and mercy.

     You should know what comes next by now, right? We went out the next day to clerics seeking for assistance and cure. I know and believe that a child is the utmost test that God can use to test a parent. May God forgive us of all our sins that we have committed consciously or subconsciously. Amen. We did alot. At the end of everything, the only solution that these clerics provided us with is using a herbal medicine consistently. I started using it and now got addicted to this drug that I can’t do without it for a day. I know that in your brain you will think smarter that perhaps you were in my parents shoes you would do better. But when life shows its real face to us, we tend to look for the solution to that problem at that instant and not the fruit of the solution that we bumped in to, during the process.