Pull Quote: “I was getting the help I needed at the Salvation Army and, in turn, I started to do work with recovering addicts themselves, and with my skills in counselling, I was able to help them fill in that gap of how to get through certain rough points in their recovery, and I started helping people more and more.”
Human beings will always have their faults. Human beings will mess up in life. But it is picking one’s self up, recognizing the problems and issues and dealing with them head-on, that is what takes courage and strength.
Our ‘Special Person’ this week has made a lot of mistakes in his life, and while this column has always invariably dealt with lots of positives, dealing with skeletons in one’s closet and coming out victorious is equally as admirable.
Eskar Adams is a true testimony of that. He is a recovering alcoholic and was addicted to crack cocaine. He was deported from the United States several years ago and returned to Guyana facing deep, immense struggles to let go of his inner demons. Fortunately, he found a source of healing help and– well as they say– the rest is history. Not only has he been ‘clean’ for several years now, but he has founded a place where he administers help to people in whom he saw his old, addicted self.
Born on September 6, 1966, in Matthew’s Ridge to parents, Yvonne Eversley, a former Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Officer and bauxite and manganese miner, George Adams, Eskar only has memories of the creeks in the interior, since the family moved to Georgetown to the Military Compound while he was four.
He lived in the GDF compound with his mother and attended St Thomas More R.C. School in 1970. His sisters June-Ann Smith, Patricia Smith and eldest sister, Audrey Beaton, also resided with him and his mom.
Eskar noted the frequent absence of his father in his early life and recounted that after his mother was transferred to another base, he (Eskar) was placed under the care of his eldest sister and then he went on to live in Plaisance where he did well in the school system. Shortly after, the entire family, (except the father) migrated to the United States in 1982.
He attended George Wingate High School in Brooklyn and noted that it was very strange to get used to at first since there was a large student body. He then went to Satellite Academy, a much smaller school in the New York area, and subsequently attended Middlesex County College (1982- 1986) where he was a Psychology Major. He later taught at Edison Co- Job Centre from 1985-1986 and ended up counselling students in the ‘Scared Straight’ programme at the same place.
“During that time, I was seeing things differently…and was able to speak to individuals in a totally different manner and get through to them, and this had a lot of troubled persons coming to me… so I got a lot of clients.”
He later migrated to California where he worked for Social Vocational Services in 1987 and taught the disabled. He was bestowed with a Congressional Award in 1988 by Congressman Matthews Martinez. He also created an enclave for persons with disabilities and made representation to Congressman Martinez for tax-breaks for companies so that they could pay half the wages for handicapped persons working in factories.
After taking a much-needed break from counselling, he started up his own business, HMC Electronics in California.
“I took a break from counselling, because dealing with the mentally disabled was very tiring.”
He went back to counselling shortly after and then his life took a downhill turn. He, who was helping persons with their personal struggles, developed several of his own– he became addicted to alcohol and drugs. It began a difficult period in his life. He had a few infractions with the law and was placed on probation, after which he was deported back to Guyana after becoming involved in a few bar-fights.
He arrived in Guyana in March 2004 and stayed at Melanie Damishana on the East Coast of Demerara.
HIDDEN HABIT
He shared how he thought he became addicted to drugs and alcohol.
“It was a hidden habit. Doing counselling and stuff, I had my own personal issues that I was concealing, and that was my alcoholism…I drank a lot. It may sound a bit far-fetched, but I believe it started when I was around four years old, when they (his relatives) first introduced alcohol to me, you know, family members came over at Christmastime and they dab the drinks down and they would come and play music and give me a little taste and I would run up and down and come back and they would all be laughing. I think that’s where it developed.”
“Not seeking counselling for myself was a big mistake. The problem grew and became very dangerous.
“When I arrived back here in Guyana, I found it very hard to re-integrate back into the society. I could not make it living in a home, believe it or not, and due to other factors, I started to live alongside the Georgetown Seawall. My life disintegrated further. I became more consumed by drinking alcohol, and then became introduced to drugs and more cocaine and that was it… I hit rock-bottom within thirteen months and I did not understand the person I became– a bright and intelligent person actually running mad on the streets. Yes, I used to talk to myself.”
But a good friend of his, Kirk “Chow Pow” Jardine saw him and forwarded him to get assistance at the Salvation Army where he became enlisted in a drug rehabilitation programme.
“I was getting the help I needed at the Salvation Army and, in turn, I started to do work with recovering addicts themselves, and with my skills in counseling, I was able to help them fill in that gap of how to get through certain rough points in their recovery, and I started helping people more and more.”
“By that time, I had arrested my problem and I was able to defeat some of the childhood traumas that I was going through– some of the resentment I had for my Dad not living in the same home– the resentment about my mother… that she was not there all the time; that I was raised by sisters. But once I got that out of the way, I was able to accept life as it was and accept the people around me as they were and started to live my life as a man.”
“I took over six months to shed my inner temptations for alcohol and drugs. It was a new beginning for me and I wanted to do something about it, to start afresh, anew.”
After he got ‘clean’, he started to work alongside Ms Karen Gomes of Help and Shelter in 2006 and “she was very supportive”. He had a side-job with the Georgetown Mayor & City Council as a painter. He then channelled his energies in various directions, but inevitably ended up in a familiar area.
TRANSITIONAL HOUSE
“I needed to do what God has kept putting in front of me to do– and that was to open up the Transitional House to help persons suffering from addictions of all sorts move on to the next phase, because there was none in Guyana.”
Gomes supported the venture and he left Georgetown, arrived in Berbice, and started to look for Board Members. “Everyone thought I was crazy…they laughed at me,” he stated.
“That’s my passion in life; trying to see people change their lives, helping persons to make that change; that leap-over to get where they need to be.”
He acquired a house and land at Essex Street, New Amsterdam, and started up Guyana’s first Transitional House “and the programme took off from the time it hit Berbice”. The house was opened in February 2, 2008, and “it kept moving on its own and expanded”. The needs of the community and town were assessed through a survey and “a lot of the youths were getting involved in substance abuse, so we had to include in our mission that we would assist those youths”.
Adams will take any person who has alcoholic addictions or such tendencies in the home.
“We do a screening first. There may be some individuals that need more intense drug treatment so we refer them to Georgetown,” he explained. “Those who have the desire to stop drinking or using drugs are welcomed.”
The addicts will normally spend the first thirty days in-house “without going out the gate…and while they are going through that detox, they are given chores that are assigned to them– yard work, garden, devotions, breakfast and then educational programmes”.
Tutors also come in and teach the addicts in various educational aspects as well as have video sessions. Online meetings are also pivotal to the rehabilitation and Adams stated that this helps the addicts not to “be closed in on what Guyana has to offer, because there’s not much in terms of drug treatment in Guyana; there’s not many persons qualified in Guyana for drug treatment, counselling and so forth, and the facilities in Guyana are all in Georgetown”. Meetings are held on Mondays from 7:30- 8:30pm and Wednesdays from 7:00pm- 8:00 pm, as well as Saturdays from 7:00- 8:00pm.
“We hold narcotics and alcoholic anonymous meetings simultaneously”, he noted.
The programme, he noted, has not received any funding, and this is posing a current challenge. However, he is hoping to start up a chicken farm on land leased by the New Amsterdam Municipality, adding to the garden that is already a part of the operations of the building.
“One of the main difficulties is really food. Everyone that comes here, they may not tell you, but you can see it on their faces, they are hungry and we have an open-kitchen policy and that is where I am hard-hit, so we plant vegetables. If we were to get a grant, we would expand on that grant.” He added that the organisation filed all paperwork necessary to register with the Ministry of Human Services “but up to now we are still waiting”. However, a small fee is charged to individuals to offset certain costs.
Adams is assisted by the Social Work students of the University of Guyana Berbice Campus (UGBC) and Institute For Distance and Continuing Education (IDCE) as well as Prison Officer, Ms Beverley Arthur, in giving counselling and care to the addicts.
BIG PAY-OFF
Adams feels very satisfied with how things have turned out in his life and has an added satisfaction that he is touching lives every day and persons who are at the stage where he once was and who are suffering just as he did, are getting the help and assistance they need to continue their lives.
“I feel excellent and that is the big pay-off. I don’t get paid for what I do, but the biggest pay- off is seeing persons go out there and have a new life, and that gives me joy to see a man who people used to spit on at one time– laying in the alley, at the bar– to see that person respected today and moving forward”.
The art to get through to a difficult person, he noted, is being honest and straightforward. He uses Albert Ellis’s theory of Cognitive Behaviour Modification and practices it daily at the Transitional House.
Adams is a certified Mediator having graduated a few weeks ago with the USAID-sponsored mediation training in New Amsterdam.
“This thing is not a money-making thing. If you don’t have a passion for it, you might as well close up and go your way”.
He also shared an interesting opinion.
“The major cause of alcohol problems in our society is that it is one of our social norms, and it is easily accessible…there’s no control, no drug-policy control. I formulated a National Drug- Alcohol Control Strategy for the Republic of Guyana, 2010 to 2020 recently and submitted it to the government, but nobody has contacted me as yet, or even come to me. I spent two and a half years working on the document.”
Making a complete turnaround of his life and dealing with his addiction through helping others, truly makes this Guyanese a ‘Special Person’ from whom many of us can learn lessons of life.