Have been in Chennai for the last one week getting a hang of the world of IV drug abuse at the TTK hospital.
Amazing experience it has been.It's like getting into a whole new world which you did not even know existed.
TTK itself is a story of courage of a young women who lost her husband to alcohol and went on to get herself trained in United States in the field of de-addiction and pioneered this work in Chennai.Backed by the industries, owned by the family she built the infrastructure which does research,trains and is a blessing to a steady stream of individuals who avail the services.
We were being trained to be trainers for the medical staff in the NACP owned TIs all over the region.The lectures we attended were engaging with amazing participation from the trainees who face this problem every day of their lives.There were a whole chunk of people from the northeast where the IV drug abuse is a major problem ,Mumbai,and the central India.
One thing that was very cleverly outlined was the trend of drug users in the city of Chennai.There was a lot of referance to the Heroin story.The heroin market in the city according to them, was predominantly monpolised by the sri-lankan Tamils.Immediately after the assasination of Rajiv Gandhi, when the LTTE went underground,the heroin dissappeared from the market in Chennai and the hospitals were flooded with heroin addicts coming in with withdrawals.This was the time when huge number of these addicts were placed on oral substitution which is slowly gaining credibilty with the national programme as well.Amazing story I thought.Today,while visiting the only TI in the city of Chennai,the counsellor was telling us how IV drugs are no more a problem in the city eversince Rajiv Gandhi's assasination and I was thinking to myself that things are never as simple as it seems .
We saw drug users running the programme successfully.Some of the peer counsellors were drug users themselves.One of them came up and introduced himself to us in a drug haze.He was thirty five year old Peter.He had apparently done his DTh in Uttarakhand sponsored by YWAM.He told me he is on cannanis currently.I wondered loudly to my colleague as to how people who had been through these courses be so wayward-she told me,Bible is something that is taught by the Holy spirit,one cannot internalise it truly through courses as one does with other subjects.It made me think hard.
To me, the entire time, I saw a picture of brokenness....and efforts being taken towards restoration..everyone getiing engaged in the mandate in one form or the other.Some making a living out of it...some thriving on it...some engaged deeply in making something out of it...aweful waste of resources in restoring something which was never meant to be broken ...that is what it all seems to be about..this entire thing called living ...either you are in the process of being broken , breaking or you are one with the mandate of the Creator ,working towards restoration of the broken humanity towards His perfect image.Even the breaking have the right to be part of the mandate..in that it was a beautiful picture...the sight of Peter counselling his peers...not much different from Simon Peter.
Amazing experience it has been.It's like getting into a whole new world which you did not even know existed.
TTK itself is a story of courage of a young women who lost her husband to alcohol and went on to get herself trained in United States in the field of de-addiction and pioneered this work in Chennai.Backed by the industries, owned by the family she built the infrastructure which does research,trains and is a blessing to a steady stream of individuals who avail the services.
We were being trained to be trainers for the medical staff in the NACP owned TIs all over the region.The lectures we attended were engaging with amazing participation from the trainees who face this problem every day of their lives.There were a whole chunk of people from the northeast where the IV drug abuse is a major problem ,Mumbai,and the central India.
One thing that was very cleverly outlined was the trend of drug users in the city of Chennai.There was a lot of referance to the Heroin story.The heroin market in the city according to them, was predominantly monpolised by the sri-lankan Tamils.Immediately after the assasination of Rajiv Gandhi, when the LTTE went underground,the heroin dissappeared from the market in Chennai and the hospitals were flooded with heroin addicts coming in with withdrawals.This was the time when huge number of these addicts were placed on oral substitution which is slowly gaining credibilty with the national programme as well.Amazing story I thought.Today,while visiting the only TI in the city of Chennai,the counsellor was telling us how IV drugs are no more a problem in the city eversince Rajiv Gandhi's assasination and I was thinking to myself that things are never as simple as it seems .
We saw drug users running the programme successfully.Some of the peer counsellors were drug users themselves.One of them came up and introduced himself to us in a drug haze.He was thirty five year old Peter.He had apparently done his DTh in Uttarakhand sponsored by YWAM.He told me he is on cannanis currently.I wondered loudly to my colleague as to how people who had been through these courses be so wayward-she told me,Bible is something that is taught by the Holy spirit,one cannot internalise it truly through courses as one does with other subjects.It made me think hard.
To me, the entire time, I saw a picture of brokenness....and efforts being taken towards restoration..everyone getiing engaged in the mandate in one form or the other.Some making a living out of it...some thriving on it...some engaged deeply in making something out of it...aweful waste of resources in restoring something which was never meant to be broken ...that is what it all seems to be about..this entire thing called living ...either you are in the process of being broken , breaking or you are one with the mandate of the Creator ,working towards restoration of the broken humanity towards His perfect image.Even the breaking have the right to be part of the mandate..in that it was a beautiful picture...the sight of Peter counselling his peers...not much different from Simon Peter.
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