Turning a New Leaf

The young man came to me spontaneously, and asked me where the Father was, and when I told him that I was the one, he was a bit surprised, but after a few seconds introduced himself, how he reached this alcoholics/drug-addicts rehabilitation center. Hailing from one of the Seven Sisters in the North Eastern India, he had been addicted to alcohol and drugs for the past eight years. For a 23 year old man, eight years of life with alcohol and drugs is not a short period, but when he decided to try this rehabilitation center, just outside the City of Joy, I suppose he really meant to amend his habits and turn a new leaf. I could see that this young man was serious about his life, though many of them had been just wasted uselessly.

But not all is lost, and the young man wanted to change things and all that he wanted heartily was the support of the people who mattered to him. He had not been a good-for-nothing young lad, who only wanted to waste the hard earned money of his parents with bad company; he had good education, which had fetched him a government job as computer operator with Air India. Who could think of such a lucrative job, which he had to resign, when he could not manage his compulsive need to have drugs, and now he regrets for having resigned the job, and wonders if he would get the same job, after returning home sane and sober.

He was not the kind of young man who did not think about his parents; when he said that his cousins and nieces are engineers and computer experts, he was not even earning a decent salary. As the first child of his parents, he had greater responsibility towards his two other siblings, one brother and one sister, but with his alcoholism and drug-addiction, he could hardly think of looking after himself. What was so very interesting for me was the fact that he was able to recall to mind what had happened to him, and how he could make things new, if only he gets an opportunity to prove his self. But he was not sure if he would survive the full course of the rehabilitation package, which may last as much as six months.

The lady who had been behind the starting of the center, whom I had gone to meet, did not share with the kind of feelings this young man had poured out to me. She had seen him for a month, and she would know about him much more than me. It is possible that my feelings were rather soft towards him, but not for the lady, who almost chased him from me, when she saw that he was talking to me, before she entered her office. Then what she told me about him shocked me: that he was jumping over the wall to get drugs, and was quarrelsome. She even said that soon they would send him away, because according to her, no one was happy with him.

The young man had a lot of complaints about everything possible: food, accommodation, toilets, the lady director, the priest who is supposed to be counseling them, the program proper… He poured himself out, and I listened to him patiently, but without making much comments. One thing was clear for me, more than psychological therapy and medication to keep him free from the desire for alcohol or drugs, what the young man required more was compassion. I have heard stories where empathy and compassion could work miracles, which no human science can explain. I wish the lady and the priest counselor concentrated more on winning the hearts of these helpless victims of circumstances, rather than offering them something which cannot really change them. There is no greater weapon to change than love and compassion.