Former addicts 'face heavy stigma'

His drug addiction destroyed him, broke him and took away his identity after being trapped in it for 25 years.

- AVRIL FILLIES

Bernard Johnson and his wife, Elizabeth, are living a happy life after he stopped using drugs.

(PHOTO: SUPPLIED)

This is how Bernard Johnson from Heideveld described his journey as an addict at the Author Talk held in the Cathkin Centre in Heideveld by Sylvia Walker, the author of Dealing in Death: Ellen Pakkies and a Community's Struggle with Tik. He is now a motivational speaker at schools or wherever he is invited to where drugs and other substance abuse are breaking communities in the Western Cape.

“My drug addiction took a heavy toll on my wife, Elizabeth, and family as every rand I earned went towards drugs. I had a wife who stood by me through it all, even when my drug debt was more than my weekly earnings,” he says.