RECOVERING ADDICT David Waithe longs for an adolescent facility to help the increasing numbers of young boys and girls he sees getting hooked on drugs.
He doesn’t want any of them to mirror his own 28-year battle with alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and pills – a dark period which is now behind him.
Waithe, the property coordinator of the Substance Abuse Foundation and addiction counsellor with the Verdun House rehabilitation centre, will mark 20 years drug-free on February 17.
The 58-year-old has been associated with Verdun House from 2000 when he left his job with the Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW).
“I had about five years in recovery at that time and I believe that my knowledge and expertise did not fit MTW at the time,” he said. “I decided that I would be better able to give back and serve the people I need to.”
He had completed the year-long addiction studies programme at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill and did the two-week practicum at the St Augustine campus in Trinidad in 1998.
Waithe recounted his ordeal with drugs, stating that the foundation was set when his grandmother made rum-soaked great cake and he loved that. He then started sneaking out the rum from the cupboard, but when he went to Combermere School he was introduced to marijuana.
Please read the full story in today’s Daily Nation, or in the eNATION edition.
