Abstract:
- Liberia’s solely government-approved rehab heart has graduated greater than 100 folks, however many returning addicts say the true battle begins after therapy, as they re-enter communities formed by worry, stigma and reminiscences of their previous.
- Relapse stays a continuing menace, with graduates describing isolation, lack of housing, and shattered household ties as main triggers.
- Officers admit reintegration is the weakest hyperlink in Liberia’s increasing anti-drug technique, with beneficiaries usually leaving rehab to unemployment, unstable houses, and restricted assist—elevating questions over whether or not restoration will be sustained past detox.
By Nemenlah Cyrus Harmon with New Narratives
GERMAN CAMP, Grand Bassa – It’s commencement day right here at Mother of Light, an off-shoot of a Lebanon-based anti-addiction program – the one authorities sanctioned facility to this point to rehabilitate the rising variety of folks hooked on medicine in Liberia. Two sufferers, who’ve accomplished between 9 and twelve months of residential therapy, are set to be formally built-in into society.
Considered one of them, a younger lady named Princess, stands in a free circle of her friends and counselors, her voice regular however her eyes stressed. (FrontPage/New Narratives is withholding final names to guard towards stigma). The 30-year-old left right here clear as soon as earlier than. However then, she says, she walked straight into the identical loneliness that drove her into medicine.
“After I got here right here, they reintegrated us,” she says. “However I didn’t have anybody to go to.” Princess is set this time shall be completely different.
Princess’s expertise displays the lengthy, troublesome journey undertaken by most individuals recovering from drug dependancy. As many as 60 % of individuals handled for dependancy will relapse no less than as soon as, in keeping with the U.S. Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse. Consultants say for a lot of of these recovering in Liberia the actual battleground begins the second they step again into neighborhoods nonetheless haunted by poverty and what dependancy as soon as made them do.
For Princess, vacancy was her set off to start out utilizing once more. After commencement, a reintegration bundle gave her cash to start out over. However like many in restoration, her household life was shredded. She had fled excessive poverty in Sinoe county in southeastern area at age 16. She ended up on the streets of Monrovia turning to prostitution to outlive and falling into drug abuse. She has no concept the place her relations are.
Princess gave start to 4 youngsters throughout her dependancy. Three had been taken away by folks she doesn’t know.
“I felt depressing and I felt rejected by my very self” she says of her dependancy.
When she left rehab, needing a well-recognized connection, she returned to previous pals and started utilizing.
“Cash is my set off,” she says. “Once they gave me the cash, I used to be bragging, boasting, to indicate myself to my pals.”
A 2022 UN-backed report discovered about one in 5 Liberian youth use narcotics, usually artificial blends akin to “kush,” whereas civil society teams estimate greater than 800 drug dens function in Monrovia alone.
President Joseph Boakai has known as dependancy a public well being menace and the federal government has poured greater than $US3.5 million into drug programming in his first two years in workplace. There may be $US3 million within the 2026 draft nationwide funds for a multi sectorial anti-drug challenge.
The state helps Mom of Mild with workers, meals, medicines, and technical assets. In Johnsonville, a transit facility now homes about 217 folks in early-stage detox earlier than referral to full rehabilitation in keeping with Dr. Moses Ziah II, Director of Psychological Well being on the Ministry of Well being and chair of the federal government’s technical working group on drug abuse. And a second rehabilitation heart is deliberate.
“The Youth Agricultural Coaching Middle in Bensonville is being renovated to change into a nationwide rehabilitation web site, anticipated to carry roughly 100–120 beds per dormitory, with area for extra sooner or later,” Dr Ziah says. He describes dependancy as a mind illness requiring voluntary, structured care, not simply raids and arrests.
The enlargement of therapy amenities displays a serious shift in method from the Weah administration which leaned on legislation enforcement alone to handle the issue. With out rehabilitation assist a variety of novice facilities sprung up throughout the nation to serve households determined for assist. A latest Entrance Web page/New Narratives investigation discovered these centers – run by untrained suppliers together with politicians and former warlords, charging huge charges – had little probability of delivering long run restoration.
Because the program started, 115 folks have graduated from inpatient care, whereas greater than 500 have handed by outpatient counseling in Congo City and Buchanan, 230 of that quantity are presently lively. Curtis estimates only one in ten have relapsed after the inpatient program.
However consultants say ongoing assist shall be obligatory to assist folks like Princess keep clear long run. Within the U.S. fifty % of individuals with drug addictions have achieved long run restoration when therapy is mixed with counseling, household assist and steady housing.
In a rustic the place greater than half folks reside in poverty and jobs for the rising youth inhabitants are scarce consultants say Liberia’s weakest hyperlink now isn’t detox, however what occurs afterward.
“Integration assist is our largest problem,” says Artinique Curtis, Mom of Mild’s administrative coordinator. “Individuals assume rehab is a magic remedy, but it surely takes readjustment. It takes going again to high school. It takes studying expertise. All that takes cash.”
With out structured reintegration, housing checks, faculty charges, job pathways, household mediation, consultants warn rehab dangers changing into a revolving door.
Households carry scars too
Reintegration isn’t solely a struggle for the individual recovering. Additionally it is a check for households that spent years residing with worry.
Joyce, whose teenage son is in therapy at Mom Mild after years in Monrovia’s ghettos, says relapse is what terrifies most dad and mom. However she believes her son’s restoration is completely different as a result of he requested for assist himself. “He got here to me and stated, ‘Mama, I’m drained now, I want you to assist me,’” she says.
Nonetheless, she worries about what waits exterior. Communities that when beat her son for stealing to purchase medicine is probably not able to belief him once more.
The stigma exterior rehab partitions stays robust. Many former customers return to locations the place their dependancy as soon as made them violent, erratic, or depending on theft. Households carry scars too and never everybody is able to forgive.
Rachel, 27, who left inpatient therapy at Mom of Mild in August 2024, says dependancy didn’t solely break her, it broke the family round her. Her father misplaced his job from the stress; her mom was continuously ailing.
Now clear for greater than a 12 months, and a senior scholar at African Methodist Episcopal College, she says avoiding medicine is a each day battle.
“Restoration is a lifetime journey,” Rachel says. “It’s potential you’ll relapse, every time that occurs, return to your supply and search assist.”
Terry, one other graduate, left Mom of Mild in February after spending a 12 months and 6 months in therapy. The longer time got here not as a result of he wanted extra detox time, however as a result of he had nowhere protected to go after therapy.
He was built-in, able to restart, however was stopped brief by a brutal actuality: no housing.
“I didn’t have, a spot to reside,” he says. “I didn’t need to lose the hassle. So, I requested the Mom of Mild household to come back again to this system till I can get a spot.”
Terry says that call seemingly saved him from relapse. Within the ghetto, he survived for 16 years at a spot often known as “Gas Oil Water’ – behind the Liberia Electrical energy Company in New Kru City – the place each day life meant theft, beatings, and starvation.
Terry remembers the darker days of his dependancy with a readability that also shakes him. Earlier than getting into therapy, he says, he had change into deeply entangled within the prison networks that dominate lots of Monrovia’s ghettos.
He recollects an evening that he was with a good friend who was caught and crushed to dying. Terry describes the expertise as a get up name. However dependancy, he says, doesn’t launch its victims gently.
“It is a scenario that you simply can’t simply say you need to go away as we speak,” he says. “Sure, you possibly can really feel unhealthy, however the withdrawal signs from medicine, it is vitally, very a lot horrible. It may possibly even kill you should you don’t have a powerful system.”
He stated his biggest worry now’s going again to dependancy. “Seeing myself going again to medicine is like I’m dropping my very own life.”
On her commencement day Princess has a powerful warning for younger Liberians: medicine don’t solely steal your physique; they steal your house in society. “Substance abuse isn’t good,” she says. “Once you take substance, nobody will respect you and other people will look down on you.”
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as a part of the Investigating Liberia Undertaking. Funding was supplied by the Swedish Embassy in Liberia. The funder had no say within the story’s content material.
