A journalist’s tryst with drugs and recovery

In a roomful of books, former journalist Vijay Simha sits cross-legged, and at ease. Behind the calm demeanour is the story of a tumultuous past and recovery from substance abuse that cost him his home and career, and landed him on streets of Delhi.

It took Simha 24 years to come to terms with his substance abuse, and undergo rehabilitation. After being clean now for 10 years, he has taken to ‘experiential counselling’ to help others deal with addiction.

Simha got hooked to alcohol at 14. Within a year, he had moved on to marijuana. By the time he was pursuing his journalism course in Osmania University, he was doing smack and brown sugar.

“Ours was the first group in South India to go big on smack. A contingent from Afghanistan during the 1982 Asian Games brought along with them huge quantities of brown sugar,” says the 51-year-old.

“Immediately after waking up, I’d reach for the drugs. It was an absolute shut-down. Excess alcohol can make a person fidgety, extremely sad or happy. With marijuana, you want to indulge in music and other activities. With brown sugar, it was a state of samadhi, just be relegated in a corner and not worry about the world,” he says.

Simha feels that most drug abusers have a history of early-life trauma. “Ninety per cent have experienced trauma before the age of five,” he says. Simha was given away by his parents to his maternal grandparents a few weeks after his birth. “I missed my parents’ affection as a baby. The mind sub-consciously registering trauma,” he says. Under peer influence, Simha started smack at his grandmother’s home in Secunderabad. “I’d tell her that it was a medicine for my cough.” Simha says. “I used to flush upto five matchstick boxes I’d use to light drugs in the bathroom.” Discovering a pile of burnt matchsticks, one day municipal workers landed at his grandmother’s house to question them on the choking drains.

He was eventually packed off to stay with his uncle in a small town in Madhya Pradesh, where he was forced to wean off drugs for a year. Withdrawal symptoms were bad: severe diarrhoea, runny nose, cold, extreme yawning, insomnia and a constant sharp ache in the gut.

After a year of working as a Process Chemist in Grasim’s factory, his drug cravings returned. “I would take a 12-hour train journey to Mumbai to load smack. Eventually, my uncle coaxed me to apply for a journalism job, and I landed in Delhi,” he says.

Simha started off his career with The Patriot, went on to work with Vinod Mehta in The Pioneer, and had a two-year stint with the Indian Express, while gulping down bottle after bottle of alcohol and staying high on narcotics.

In 1998, he was thrown out of his job. Left with no money, he soon lost his house and later his friends. For cash, he took to conning people by selling them his hard-luck stories.

Once he landed in NCP sumpremo Sharad Pawar’s office to sell his sob story. Pawar asked him how he needed. Simha, put up his fingers, indicating 10. He meant 10,000 rupees, which could keep him on smack for rest of the month. Pawar asked Simha to come home in evening and see his assistant. “Nobody comes to Pawar for such a small amount of money. So Pawar’s assistant added a couple of zeros to the figure, and was baffled at why I needed it. I went back with Rs5000,” he says.

During that time, Simha was reduced to begging. “I would not eat. Whatever money I had, I’d use it for drugs, and spend nights on the Delhi railway platforms or pavements of Connaught Place. No one would allow a dirty, smelly man like me, with matted hair, inside their home,” he reminisces.

In 2002, Simha’s former colleague and friend Paranjoy Guha Thakurta admitted him in a rehab at Patel Nagar in Delhi. It was a horror home, he says. “Rehabs perpetuate darkness. There were gang-wars, and then there was a death in the rehab. There were super-scandals, all of them invisible to a person outside.”

Simha had his rude awakening at 38, while in rehab. Drugs were not the answer to the deep emotional trauma he was nursing since he was a baby. After eight months of honest recovery, the former journalist went on to help manage the rehab for another year.

With a decade of staying clean and studying about substance abuse, Simha now offers experiential counselling. When he appeared on Satyameva Jayate talking about his life, he got about 500 calls from people going through a similar situation. He has reached out to substance abusers as far as in Nigeria and Mexico, and counseled them over video calls.

Simha is now contacting all his friends whom he owes money. “I owe money to a lot of friends. I am returning it bit by bit. You have to be honest, otherwise you cannot recover. No lies,” he says.Experiential counselling has not taken off in India. While psychologists go by the textbook, psychiatrists offer medication, in this realm. “I am working on building an institution that can train persons on experiential counselling.”

Simha has worked with 250 persons so far. He’s seen a difference in about 10 to 25 per cent cases. “You have to be honest enough to seek help. A connection with the counsellor is also important.

Counselling can’t work in toxic conditions,” he says.

Simha is nowpenning two books to be out next year. While one is based on his tryst with drugs and alcohol, and the second one addresses substance abusers and their kin.