Finding hope after addiction

White Magic
Arjun Nath
Harper Collins
2016, pp 296 ,Rs 399

What does it take to kick a serious addiction to hard drugs and bad feelings? Anyone curious to know this must read White Magic — A Story of Heartbreak, Drugs and Hope. A riveting account of recovery from drug addiction by Arjun Nath, this book also tells the life story of the eccentric Dr Yusuf Merchant, the founder President of Drug Abuse Information Rehabilitation & Research Centre and creator of the acclaimed Land programme.

Arjun’s brilliant career as a lawyer comes to a grinding halt when his addiction to heroin spirals out of control. This 30-something-year-old heads off to yet another rehab centre — his fourth in a decade — with a low morale. Nothing prepares him for his experience at Land, a unique rehabilitation facility in the verdant foothills of the Haji Malang mountain range of the Western Ghats. At the start, Arjun is both baffled and suspicious. Used to the grim atmosphere of other recovery setups, he wonders why Land is an “almost happy” place. It takes him several months to overcome his urge to run away, make friends with others, and develop a passion for lifting weights and body building. White Magic chronicles this transformation.

To his credit, Arjun doesn’t glorify addiction or reduce it to a “bad habit”. Instead, he is candid about his relationship with substance and the bad stuff underneath; boredom, low self-worth, and a means to evade the deeper, messier emotions of relationships. He likens his craving for heroin to those for chocolate cake and sex, multiplied hundreds of times. “The danger in heroin, the really scary thing, is not what she does to you but what she doesn’t. You don’t get jittery like on coke or speed; or hungry and horny like with marijuana. Your chest heats up and you’re thinking, hey, this could be bourbon anywhere… the hours float.”

Nothing is possible for a heroin addict, says Arjun — whether it’s being in love, going on a family holiday, or even liking himself. “Each time I’ve tried to quit, I’ve wanted to quit with every fibre of my being,” he says, describing the time he handed his wallet over to his friend and instructed him to lock him into a room with a carton of cigarettes and a TV for four days. The result? A wrecked room, broken window and a return to his addictive ways five days later.

Hope springs, however, when Arjun encounters the “God of Detox”, Dr Yusuf Merchant, and White Magic is an ode to the author’s saviour. The fiercely independent Yusuf was born Ismail, renamed Yusuf and Bhai: at age 7, he announced his intention to leave school and start a business; at 17 he acquired a car; at 19 he became a husband, and soon afterwards, enrolled in JJ medical college against the wishes of his wife and family. His determination to follow his own heart led him to living on the streets of Mumbai and looking for ways to fund his own medical education. Yusuf’s unconventional attitude enabled him to live by his own rules, and today he is powerful force for addicts looking for a new meaning. His programme at Land reflects his maverick personality.

Typical rehab setups house drug addicts who are treated by counsellors, usually recovered addicts themselves. In Land, however, a third of the “programmers” (as the residents are called) have never touched drugs. They come to treat their “unhappiness” instead, which manifests as drug and alcohol addiction, uncontrollable rage, self-harm etc. Unlike the 12-step Narcotics Anonymous programme, the Land plan is more loosely structured, and managed by the residents themselves who are referred to as “monitors”. Recovery, however, is a tricky business and staying clean is even harder. Arjun’s memoir has accounts of friends who relapse, sometimes even OD. But for the author, sticking to the programme long enough to kick his habit and write White Magic has been his major achievement. The rest is history.