The thought of attending a drug talk is, at a push, remotely interesting, but nothing I haven’t heard before. I hope it won’t be one of those, ‘I used drugs, feel sorry for me, but now I’m clean and happy…blah blah blah’ gigs.
The thought of attending a drug talk is, at a push, remotely interesting, but nothing I haven’t heard before. I hope it won’t be one of those, ‘I used drugs, feel sorry for me, but now I’m clean and happy…blah blah blah’ gigs.
So I sit in a cold auditorium hoping I won’t have to resort to drawing stick figures on my notepad to keep awake.
Then Melinda Ferguson walks in. I take in the ‘cool-hipness’ of this middle-aged woman – tight jeans, platform shoes and a tight leather jacket hugs her small frame.
From the moment she opens her mouth to speak I am hooked. I sit in my chair, fixated on her.
Most people are good at hiding from the TRUTH.
In her talk ‘Addiction’ Ferguson speaks about the truth behind her addiction and the reality of being an ex-drug addict.
I have read quite a few memoirs of drug abuse and the master narrative is one of breaking the habit and finally coming clean. Yet they seem to leave out real life. They don’t mention the world outside rehab, the temptation to use again and the attempt to rebuild a very broken life.
Ferguson grew up in a home without a father, who had died in front of her from a heart attack when she was four, and an alcoholic mother. She began raiding her mother’s liquor cabinet at the tender age of 10, which inevitably sparked her alcohol addiction.
When she was in high school she was drinking on a daily basis and began smoking dagga. At 27 she had her first hit of heroin and crack cocaine which was “the beginning of the end”. For the next six years she would abandon her life as a promising film maker, lose her husband, her two sons, everything she owned and essentially self-destruct.
How could an intelligent, educated and middle class woman end up living on the streets of Hillbrow?
Intelligent, educated and middle class people always assume, ‘This could never happen to me’. Mmm. The truth is, most of us don’t come from picture-perfect, picket-fence homes.
Her life is not as far-fetched as most would assume. She speaks openly about being on drugs while pregnant with her sons. How could a mother put herself above her unborn child? She says she is still trying to forgive herself for it. But she is prepared to deal with the reality that one day they might hate her for what she has done.
Ferguson is like a drug – by the end of her talk I feel like a junkie desperate for my next hit. I race out the door and rush to get a copy of her book. I feel a sense of relief as I open the pages and her words spill out in front of me.
Her memoir ‘Smacked’, tells her brutally honest life story from her first memories as a child in a broken home. The book opens with an account of her being gang-raped by Nigerian drug dealers.
She writes, “I have a gun in my mouth. Hysteria rises. ‘Shoot me, don’t rape me, shootmedon’trapemeshootme’ .” I am left dumbstruck. I have to read more.
The book starts off fast-paced, words juggling from one line to the next, confusion and pain which tears through each page. Above all the pain and hurt and drugs there is honesty.
Plain, untarnished, brutal honesty.
