For The Bohol Tribune
In This Our Journey
NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS
In last week’s column, we reported the recommendations presented during
consultations with drug addiction professionals on how to address this
disturbing phenomenon brought about by the unrelenting campaign against drug users
and pushers launched by the new administration. It was just a personal
initiative with the modest aim to gather ideas on how to deal with what could
develop into a major crisis.
As expected, only a few responded to our personal invitation.
We were quite heartened, however, with the quality of the sharing done in
this small café named Crescencia, by the road in Poblacion, Baclayon, where
incidentally dozens of drug users under rehabilitation gather every Wednesday
night for their weekly sharing of experiences and reflections.
I summarized in my last column what I heard during this series of
meetings with friends inspired actually
by our group’s reading of the Biblical passage on the Good Samaritan in our
action group meeting (AGM), a regular activity of the Brotherhood of Christian
Businessmen and Professionals (BCBP) which I joined in 2015 as part of efforts
to go back to my faith after years of doubt and skepticism. But that’s another
story.
Brod Irwyn Lumuthang and his wife,
Sis Joy, who are our AGM facilitators, encouraged us to put into writing what
could be done about having so many identified drug users left in the custody of
their respective families waiting for further action by counselling or
rehabilitation. Somebody joked that if they revert to the old ways of using or
in some cases, actually selling drugs, bullets would surely come as their way
of salvation.
A grim joke, but newspaper pictures of bloodied bodies by the road, in
isolated places in some remote barangays, in crowded buses and terminals, all
tend to show what could be expected if drug users and pushers return to their
old ways. Effective psychological warfare images, but they may overshadow more
caring and humanitarian ways to address drug addiction problems.
In having this overwhelming number of surrenderees, with Bohol, for
instance, having 22,000 now and still counting, there’s no way you can go by
the insane solution of just killing all of them to get rid of the problem; no
way you can go shooting them down like
they are stray dogs, those who would revert to the old ways, for sheer lack of
guns and bullets, not to mention the lack of bounty money to spread around and the
various paper forms to fill to justify the killing and to have probably an
official receipt of each killing required to collect the bounty. What a cruel country
we have become to imagine this could happen at all!
I reported in last week’s column what the consultation participants
shared with us during the meeting. For the benefit of LGUs and NGOs who are
interested to access more information about services which can be used to
formulate a strategy or simply to decide on what to do about these hundreds of
identified drug users now in the custody of their respective families , let me
give here some names and contact numberst: Jimmy Clemente, 0998 888 1559; Alain
Alino, 0917 325 0252; Rene Francisco, 0918 908 8237; Epoy Jiffy Laroya, 0907
350 5041.
They run a network of around ten or more drug rehab centers in the
Visayas and Mindanao and have announced their intention to adjust their
admission fees and modify treatment procedures to cope with the thousands of
drug users and pushers now identified and obviously pardoned but needing a
systematic program of counselling and treatment.
Alain Alino visited Bohol last week to meet with government officers tasked
to plan the government’s drug rehab center. He said he also accompanied them to
the FARM It Works Balay Kahayag (FITWBK) drug rehab center in Laya, Baclayon to
see first-hand what is being done in the facility.
Rene Francisco went around the province last week-end to look for venues
for possible tent cities, his proposed strategy to cope with hundreds who have
no access to treatment services. He is expected to attend a conference this
weekend in Iloilo City to discuss his
recommended strategy.
For his part, Jimmy Clemente, is organizing what he calls a “Unity
Conference” among drug abuse professionals from various drug rehabilitation
centers this week-end in Iloilo City to be able to identify collaborative approaches regarding drug rehabilitation
which can be presented later to target LGUs and other agencies.
Meanwhile, Miriam P. Cue, noted psychologist originally from my adopted town,
Baclayon, emailed last 18 July her proposed strategy since she could not make
it to the consultation meeting on account of her usually tight work schedule at
the New Day Rehabilitation Center in Davao City and her engagements with
international organizations.
We meant to present her proposed strategy in this week’s column but we
decided to post the entire strategy in our Facebook pages and blogs last week to
make her ideas available to as many people as possible. It is timely to do so
because provincial governments and the Municipal LGUs all over the country are
preparing their respective plans on how to handle the situation of having
hundreds of drug users waiting for some kind of treatment or counselling and I
believe that her ideas will be quite useful at this time.
Miriam P. Cue from Baclayon, Bohol is one of the country's
internationally-known drug addiction professional. She is always eager to lend
her expertise to the Government and other sectors interested to be involved in
this quite unique problem in Bohol and in the country where drug users and
pushers have been identified, turning themselves in to police authorities,
their numbers growing by leaps and bounds from day to day.
Her credentials is impeccable: Chairperson, Professional Regulatory Board
of Psychology at the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC); Clinical
Psychologist and Psychotherapist at NDRC Davao and internationally-known trainer
of recovery coaches and other drug addiction professionals.I believe that her
proposed strategy will be quite a valuable input to all sectors in Bohol and
other provinces who are now preoccupied on how to handle a critical situation
resulting from the surrender of thousands of drug users needing a systematic treatment
program.
I have provided copies of her proposed strategy to government offices and
NGOs who may be interested to implement her ideas. For this column, however, I
will limit myself to the last section of her paper because I think it is
something in which most of us who are not drug addiction professionals can
assist. Here is that portion of her
paper she categorizes as Recovery Supports:
“a. Working with Clients through non-clinical services that are used with treatment to
support
individual clients
in their recovery goals. This can be done by peers and self-help groups.
“b. Working with families through Community Based Programs. The families of all those
surrendered in
particular, need to be educated and provided the appropriate supports.
Many of them could be
suffering from social stigma now. They may not know what to do
anymore, with
their confusion... their co-dependencies and their involvement with the
clients.
“These families were
already affected before these users/peddlers surrendered; and these
users/peddlers will
go back to their families after treatment and/or intervention. Build and foster
health, resilience, wellness and quality of life through the transition of individual clients and client families within the network of
families and recovery partners in the community.
“These families and
recovery partners play a very critical role in recovery and they can also be
tapped for essential supports to our rehabilitation efforts.
“Seek help from the
DOH, establish linkages with the Church and various church/faith groups, with
the DDB and other government institutions, with UNODC, with rehabilitation
centers and facilities, SUD [Substance Use Disorder] treatment professionals
and other treatment-providers outside Bohol for needed supports.
“Not all may need
treatment. Some of them may only need psycho-social support in their efforts to
find acceptance, amnesty, redemption and reintegration.
“Please realize as
well that SUD treatment for the parolees, and/or probationers (whatever you
call these offenders) differ from the treatment of those who have not been in
conflict with the law and/or those in jail or in prison. Their freedom may be
curtailed but they still have greater access to drugs and alcohol than those
who are incarcerated, hence, the greater potential for relapse and
recidivism.
“Many of the
"surrenderees" may have a co-occurring anti-social personality
disorder, or a conduct disorder (for those below 18); many of them may be
spiritually empty and financially impoverished.
“Securing their basic
needs such as food and shelter, re-examining their values, helping them see the
meaning of their life and purpose in this world, and providing more intensive
psychotherapy among other treatment strategies to address the co-occuring
problem, should help them reintegrate into society.”
Those of us who are
not drug addiction professionals will find in this portion of the proposed
strategy justification to get more involved. No special qualification required
to help facilitate services to reach these drug users, most of them may not
need a rehabilitation center to recover. We need not be psychologists,
psychiatrists and social workers, as well as doctors and nurses, to assume a
role in the current crisis to cope with having thousands of self-confessed drug
addicts in our midst, some of them are close friends and relatives.
We need only to find
a reason to care. For comments, email: npestelos@gmail.com
###NMP/21 July 2016/1.06 p.m.
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