After being dependent on heroin and smack for 17 years, recovered 53-year-old now volunteers at a kids' de-addiction centre
Sitting on a stool in the Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital, Sanjeev Kumar looks affectionately at five children. The kids are drug addicts and he is striving to help them lead a normal life. Kumar's own journey as a Good Samaritan, however, did not start with charity or compassion, but on the dark and dismal path of addiction.
The 53-year-old 'peer attendant' started abusing drugs, mainly smack and heroin, in 1995.
"My addiction started when I lost my job as the company shut its headquarters in Delhi. I left for my hometown in Varanasi and started consuming heroin,"says Kumar, who completed his Masters in Sociology from Kashi Vidyapeeth in 1987.
"My brother took me to Raipur to keep me away from drugs. But I ran away in 2000. Then, till 2012, I lived in Nizamuddin Basti in Delhi, and no one in my family knew my whereabouts," he says.
Nizamuddin acted as a great enabler for Kumar as he became a local tour guide. The handsome tips that he received from foreigners made it easy for him to fuel his habit. Amid all this, Kumar's wife and son also left him.
Finally, after wasting 12 years in a drug-fuelled haze, Kumar was dying to get better. In 2012, he heard about an NGO that helped people who wanted to quit drugs, enrolled himself, and started living there. With regular medicines and by spending time with others on the same path, he started to recover.
It has now been five years since Kumar last used any drug. Also, it has been three months since he took Addnok, a medicine that helps people dependent on heroin. So, he decided to help other addicts.
Recently, Kumar's dream came true after, based on his good track record, the NGO suggested his name, along with 22 others, for the post of peer attendant at children drug de-addiction centres in government hospitals.
Kumar joined his new workplace on June 8 and is currently taking care of five children, aged between 10 and 14 years of age. He still lives at the NGO headquarters as a volunteer, and narrating his own life story as an example, he helps those who got caught in the self-defeating net of addiction at such a tender age.
A month ago, the state government launched five new children de-addiction centres at different hospitals in Delhi — Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital, GB Pant Hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, and Ambedkar Hospital.
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