'My life as a recovering heroin addict'
People say heroin is cheap, but it's not. It's the most expensive drug in this world.
What you need to know:
- People say heroin is cheap, but it's not. It's the most expensive drug in this world.
- I became a heavy junkie after about two years and needed about 40 or 50 sachets a day.
My name is Kimberly Chelimo. I am a recovering heroin addict. The first drug I ever used was Marijuana (weed).
I was 14 then, on a holiday break at Mombasa with my cousins. One of my elder ones was using it, and I was drawn to it.
Then, a lot of things were going on in my life, from exams to social and family pressure, but I didn't have a coping mechanism. My parents were also busy chasing a good life because they wanted us to have the best.
The weed, even though I was smoking on and off, gave me a feeling of escape. It made me feel that I was somewhere else and was somebody else. It made me feel pretty and good. I started becoming addicted to that feeling.
I was in boarding school then, but I found ways to sneak it in. I smoked in school and was selling at some point. I also started indulging in cigarettes.
When I couldn't smoke the weed, I smoked the cigar and put Kuber (smokeless tobacco) under the tongue. Kuber is highly addictive and is disguised as a mouth freshener.
When it was time for me to join the university, I was taken to South Africa. That transition was tough for me.
Unlike children who are studying for their tertiary education, I had a parent who had a terminal illness and did not know how to cope with that.
In our family, it was the elephant in the room. We imagined that the more we ignored this problem, it would disappear. We would see this parent going to the hospital, taking all kinds of medication. Yet, we didn't want to sit down and face it and discuss the possibility of death.
I was 18 then, a young woman with dreams, trying to date and see what the future would bring, but all I could see in the future was death. I knew my parent was going to die, so there was no hope.
In South Africa, I enrolled in the university in the Bachelor of Arts Faculty studying criminology, but I kept changing my units. I went for orientation because it was a party and I needed to figure out who the pushers and the drug dealers were so that I know how to get my doses.
Overall, I attended about four lectures and two tutorials. Unlike in Kenya, drugs are sold in the open. I was in an international university and connected with a group of Australian friends who loved cocaine and a bunch of Zimbabweans who were into weed. I started using cocaine and got deeper into weed.
When I would get money, instead of buying books and food or paying rent, I would use buy drugs. In one week, I would have exhausted all my pocket money. When I didn't have money for cocaine, I would use Khat. Khat is crystal meth.
However, I didn't know that at the time. I was about 19 then and was just experimenting with anything I could get my hands on. After about six months to one year, I was now addicted. It was all I could think about.
Drugs and all kinds of addictions, such as sex, gambling, and food addiction, target the reward system in the brain. A part of the human brain releases a chemical called dopamine when the human is doing something that gives them pleasure.
When you take a drug, say cocaine, it changes the way the brain releases dopamine. You get a rush of dopamine that your brain eventually gets addicted to. Post that, nothing can excite you anymore. The brain becomes addicted, and this manifests physically.
A drug user demonstrates how they mix other drugs with heroin to increase volume and make the final product more portent.
When you don't have the dopamine released the way your brain has gotten used to, the body becomes sick.
For cocaine, the symptoms are not very severe but differ from person to person. One may feel depressed, anxious, very irritable and suffer from insomnia. Withdrawal symptoms for Marijuana include feeling moody, depressed, being very irritable and lacking an appetite.
I stayed in South Africa for about four years, then came back to Kenya because the parent that I was so anxious and fearful that they would pass actually passed. I was in pain and traumatised, but because I still didn't have any coping mechanisms, I wasn't releasing those feelings and needed an escape.
All I had known in Cape Town at the time was Marijuana. Back home, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd, went back to using cocaine, and got introduced to ecstasy. I returned to the normal dopamine levels I was used to in South Africa.
Since I wasn't going to school, my routine would be to wake up in the morning, call the drug dealer, get the drugs, go to Westlands and party all night. We would be on the overdrive.
This is where you go to a club on a Friday evening, leave on Saturday morning, drive to a different city drunk, high and hanging out of the windows, arrive, book a lodging, sleep, wake up, find a club in that city, leave in the morning to another place and repeat.
At the time, I was taking advantage of my parent's death, which allowed me to manipulate my other parent and family members into giving me money.
After a while, they realised that I was misusing the money. My remaining parent started questioning whether I would go back to South Africa to study and if not, what plans I had for my life.
To appease him, I would come up with stories. I told him I wanted an IT course and was taken to an IT College.
After that, I said I wanted to study drama and film, so I enrolled at USIU. Then I said I wanted to study business management and was taken to KIM Business School. I would arrive, stay in school for about a week, and then disappear.
Because of this and my parent's questions about my future plans, I started feeling like a failure. The feeling was coupled with grief, low self-esteem, and feeling unhappy with myself, my body and my physical appearance. I was constantly pulling myself down and comparing myself with other people.
I felt I was nothing. I was involved in relationships with people who were equally lost at the time. I was dating alcoholics and drug addicts. It felt like the blind leading the blind.
After some time, my parent realised something was seriously wrong, but they had no idea what was coming.
I took a trip to Mombasa with the person I was dating and a bunch of friends.
We hired a cottage and decided we were just going to party. We went to a club in Ukunda, but I got bored quickly because I was not a fan of alcohol. Without cocaine at hand, I decided to go looking.
I went to the beach and found this mzungu who looked like a junkie. I told him I wanted cocaine. He told me to give him sh5000 and to wait for him. After an hour, he was back with many sachets. The cocaine I was used to buying in South Africa came in a black sachet or in a vile, but this was wrapped in foil.
He claimed they keep it in a foil to protect it from humidity. When I opened the packet, the powder was brown. Cocaine is a very bright white. I questioned him, but even before he responded, I sniffed it and then blacked out immediately.
I came to, being woken up by my screaming and panicked friends. I remember feeling euphoria. I started vomiting, but I oddly felt good.
When we went back to the cottage, I vomited all night. When I woke the following day, with the extra heroin in my pocket and my brain remembering the euphoria, I wanted to try them again.
I sniffed it, and I felt good. I didn't vomit this time. For the remaining two days, I used the powder. I believe deep down, somewhere in my soul, I knew this was heroin, but I did not want to face that truth yet.
When I got back to Nairobi, I felt very sick. I had diarrhoea, hot and cold sweats, couldn't concentrate, was dizzy, couldn't focus, felt dehydrated, and felt like my joints were locking; I felt like I was dying.
I called my weed supplier and told him I was looking for brown powder, nicknamed Kete, which I overheard the Mzungu saying. He said to send him 500 bob and brought me five sachets.
A drug user demonstrates how they mix other drugs with heroin to increase volume and make the final product more portent.
People say heroin is cheap, but it's not. It's the most expensive drug in this world. At first, the five sachets lasted me for a day. After a week, I needed 20 sachets a day. After a month, I needed 30 sachets a day. That's Sh3,000 needed daily, and you haven't eaten or done anything.
I became a heavy junkie after about two years and needed about 40 or 50 sachets a day. The more you take it, the more your tolerance increases.
It started affecting me physically. I lost a lot of weight, my skin tone changed, I became darker, and my eyes were sunken. I was dirty and looked withdrawn from reality, with a slurred speech. I looked like a walking zombie.
At that point, my family realised it was severe, and we needed an intervention. Then, I didn't quite understand what rehab was. They asked me whether I wanted to go to rehab, and I said yes. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
I went to rehab for the first time in 2016. The withdrawals were terrible, but they were not life-threatening. You cannot sleep, you have seizures, and you cannot keep any liquid down.
You also feel like something is choking you; you cannot concentrate, your vision is blurry, you feel like your skin is on fire, you have diarrhoea, and you feel like there is electricity passing through your spine. You also feel like your joints are locking and restless and uncomfortable.
I stayed there for three months and then started participating in the classes and programs. But deep down, I knew I was not doing any work on myself. I was there on a seemingly short break.
Every time my parents and relatives would come to visit, they were so happy because I had gained some weight. They would excitedly exclaim that rehab was working, yet all I was doing in there was eating.
I also lied to them and said I felt so good and was feeling happy and that I planned to go back to school once discharged.
I told them what they wanted to hear because I imagined the amount of money they had spent there was a lot. I was ashamed to say that the food was terrible or that we weren't doing anything in the programs.
After being discharged, I said I wanted to work and got a job. Still, I had not learnt any coping mechanisms in rehab.
Now, I had work pressure, interpersonal conflicts with others I was working with, and expectations to perform. My family and friends were celebrating me like I had done something big. I relapsed, and disappointment, guilt and shame followed. I relapsed about six times.
The family eventually got tired, and I was shunned. That's the time I became homeless. It was 2018. I was sleeping on shop verandas in Ngara.
Early in the morning, they would chase me. I would walk around with a gunia, and if I saw someone with something valuable, I would just grab it.
Later, at the drug den, I would pour everything out, see what was valuable, and sell it. The gunia was also a mobile store for my bedding — cardboard and a blanket. After a long day of walking, begging, and sometimes stealing, I lay down my cardboard and gunia and then slept.
Fortunately, there was a group of mechanics who found me sleeping on the verandas, pitied me, and gave me a space behind their makeshift garage to lay my head for the nights.
The condition was that I would get up every 6 am, sweep the garage and my place of sleep, gather my beddings and disappear, then come back at night, alone, when they had closed. For a year, I slept there.
Because of the dopamine released into my brain, I could never tell that my situation was that bad.
I had a water bottle that I would urinate in at night, then pour the pee in the morning. I would sweep in the morning, get 10 or 20 bob, go to the drug den, buy tea and mandazi, and a booster sachet to keep off my withdrawal symptoms.
Every day, I made sure to get 500 bobs to get me three sachets of heroin, each at 150 bobs, and then began another day of carrying my gunia, walking, begging and stealing, and making deals to get money.
In 2020, before Covid-19 hit, I begged my parent to take me to rehab through an intervention of a mechanic.
This was the 6th time. My parent came through and took me to rehab for a year, where I pulled myself out of the pits.
After completion, there was a discharge plan for me that included family therapy. But it was not executed well, and I relapsed within six months. That was it for my family. They were done.
I went back to being homeless, but my parent stepped in again, only to ensure that I had a roof over my head. But I was back to my old ways, begging for money and doing deals.
I had even started injecting myself with heroin. I wanted to die. I was about 32 or 33 years old at the time. I looked at my life, and there was nothing to look forward to.
I survived two overdoses that should have killed me and endured many beatings by mobs that should have ended my life. I also survived an attempted murder. I asked God, "Why am I still alive? I am tired. Let it end."
Soon after, I met someone. I believed then that he was a mechanic. I was going to the den to buy tea. He stopped me and asked to pray for me.
But I was so irritable, and asked him, "utanibuyia chai? kuna kitu utanipa?" and he told me he would buy me tea.
He prayed over me for so long that I forgot he was praying. I forgot I had withdrawal symptoms to cure. Something changed inside of me spiritually.
After the prayer, I didn't even bother about the money for the tea. He left, I went to the drug den and bought the drugs, but my spirit was so unsettled.
The following day, I heard about methadone. I had heard about it before and tried it in 2017, but I was taking methadone and using heroin at the same time. The only reason I tried it was to try and appease my parent.
This time around, I went to a methadone clinic, and I took my methadone dose. I cried at the clinic because I couldn't believe that the methadone was working. From that day in June 2022, I have never used heroin again.
Methadone has helped me since. It is another form of a drug, but it doesn't give you the high or cause withdrawal symptoms.
You start off with 30 milligrams, and then they gradually increase the amount to a level your body feels comfortable with, where you can sleep and do everything well. My dosage was increased to about 120 milligrams.
When you go to the clinic, they not only deal with your addiction but also your mental concerns and other diseases you may have, such as TB, hepatitis B and C, and venereal diseases, which are common among drug users. They listen to us and find our perspectives crucial.
I'm currently doing advocacy against drug abuse on Tiktok, a page that I started a few months ago. I also want to advocate for mothers and children of drug addicts.
I have adopted a four-year-old child whose mother is actively using drugs. I have loved him since the day he was born. He used to come to the drug den with the mother.
I'm in the process of registering a group that cares for mothers and children affected by drugs. I am also now studying addiction counselling.
From now on, I'm focused on graduating, seeing this group get off the ground, and finding a job, even though I know I burnt many bridges. My parent also supports me with rent and school fees, but what I desire the most is to earn his respect.
