Trudy Simpson, Staff Reporter
AT AGE 14, Derick smoked his first cigarette. He was encouraged, he said, by young men he met on the street, where he fled to escape the pain of living in a broken home.
A year later, Derick 'moved up' to ganja. He said that he was introduced to the drug by peers in the music business. For seven years, ganja was his crutch, helping him to deal with his feelings.
"Ganja used to give me a vibes, a nice vibes. When I'm shy, it takes me far from that. It build up mi self-esteem," Derick recalled.
Ganja also helped Derick, now 40, to dim nagging feelings of worthlessness and to ease emotional pain after his 13-year romantic relationship ended.
But even ganja's potent effect did not last.
"I couldn't deal with the feelings but ganja put me in a vibe that me no like. It make me start think on some weird things ... Mi just feel like mi did ah go mad. That's the feeling I didn't like and so I stopped," he said.
But a craving remained, and according to Derick, using ganja made it easier for him to graduate to more dangerous drugs, like crack. Crack is a highly addictive stimulant derived from cocaine.
TWO RELAPSES
When The Gleaner caught up with Derick last Friday, he was in drug rehabilitation for the third time, after having had two relapses into crack addiction.
He said, as it was with other drugs, he was driven to crack as he tried to escape more feelings of doubt and worthlessness and more relationship problems. The problems were made worse because he could not talk about them, he said.
Crack met a need that ganja could not fill anymore.
"It ("crack") was nice, very nice. All I knew was that when I took it, I didn't remember anything," he said.
But there were bad consequences for Derick, a father of three.
"I was a singer and I lost my prestige. I lost my family. I lost my friends and I lost me. At one point, I was reduced to begging, and the drug forced me to con, to lie and to steal," Derick recalled. It was his youngest child who inspired him to fight drug addiction; his eight-year-old daughter offered to save her lunch money (given to her by the mother) to pay his rent after learning he was homeless.
"Can you imagine an eight-year-old telling her father that? I left and cried and decided to come to rehab," Derick said.
