In the third programme of the series, Neil Nunes takes a look at rehabilitation programmes in the Caribbean. Although the range of approaches suggests that there isn’t one simple solution to helping addicts who want to give up, there does seem to be one common theme to all the programmes – support and understanding, especially from current and former addicts.
Salvador, originally from Puerto Rico and now living in Cuba, can’t think of a drug he hasn’t used. No rehab programmes worked for him, until he was admitted to a public psychiatric hospital in Havana, where he started going to group therapy. He now believes there is no way he would go back to using drugs. His marriage, to a Cuban woman he met through the programme, was due to happen the day after the interview and his recovery from addiction has given him a new lease of life as a creative writer. His second volume of poems, which he considers to be his best, is due to be published in a couple of months.
Sean, an ex-cocaine addict, is a part of the Rebirth House programme a few miles outside Port of Spain, Trinidad. He found that when he stopped doing drugs it created a void in his life, which he needed to fill with something else. The programme provided this by giving him a strict daily routine from morning to night. Rebirth House has a policy of only employing ex-addicts to run the programme. The only exception is Valerie, their spiritual counsellor, although Sean thinks she’s “addicted to religion!” Sean has found that the therapeutic effect of one addict helping another is unparalleled, because an ex-addict is in the best position to understand - and therefore effectively help - another addict.
Anthony Richards and Karissa McCarter are directors of a faith-based rehabilitation programme in Jamaica. They believe that it’s only through the power of Christ that users can truly be set free from their addiction. The 12-month residential programme consists of 14 courses of “group services” with topics such as “Love and acceptance of oneself”, “Going through failures” and “Temptation”. Anthony Richards came through the programme himself, after becoming hooked on cocaine. In the 1980’s he was a police officer fighting crime on the streets of Kingston, and started taking drugs to help him deal with the stress of his job.
