When Peejay, a mother from the province of Ifugao succumbed to illegal drug addiction, she did not realize what she traded it for—the trust of her children.

Peejay could still remember how devastated she was when her daughter visited her while she was detained at the Ifugao District Jail. She was disheartened as she saw her approach her jail cell and broke into emotions. 

“Ma, akala ko ikaw ang best mom in the world,” her daughter, who was also pregnant during that time, said. “…pero gumagamit ka pala ng droga,” she continued.

Peejay was left speechless and powerless, as she watched her daughter rushed out of the Ifugao District Jail, sobbing. During that moment, one thing was clear to her  she failed at being a mother.

Falling to addiction

Peejay grew up in poverty. As such, she promised herself that she would do everything she could to not let her future children undergo the hardships she experienced growing up.

While she was unable to reach college, Peejay was lucky to be employed by an affluent family that owned several businesses in three provinces in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR). She persevered and performed her job well. As a result, she earned the trust of her employer and was entrusted to run one of their establishments. It was during that time when she met her husband, a co-worker who also dreamed of building a family and providing his future children with a better life. They later got married and continued working for the same employer.  Peejay first got exposed to illegal drugs when she saw her employers took illegal substances for recreation. In 2014, while attending a wake in their neighborhood, her friends urged her to try to take shabu or methamphetamine hydrochloride so she could stay awake all night—the start of her fall to drug addiction. Since then, she would join her friends during their drug sessions.

It was not too long when Peejay’s husband learned of her secret. After a year, he confronted her after hearing rumors from their neighborhood. She denied using drugs at first, but later admitted it and even persuaded her husband to try taking the illegal substances as a relaxant after a day of work. Soon, it was not only Peejay who had been taking illegal drugs, but also her husband.

After learning what the couple has been up to, policemen raided Peejay and her husband’s home and found drug paraphernalia. Peejay was at work while her children were at school when the raid was conducted by authorities, so she was still able to hide what happened to their children. Criminal charges were then filed by the police against Peejay.

Starting again

After what happened, both Peejay and her husband decided to turn over a new leaf by enrolling for rehabilitation at the Ifugao Reflection Camp (IRC), a facility located in Kiangan, Ifugao that enables recovering drug personalities (RDPs) to engage in a community-based rehabilitation program.

Peejay was already on the road towards renewing her life at IRC when policemen came to arrest her during her second week at the camp by virtue of a warrant of arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia. She made bail, but was later found guilty and was convicted. She was then brought to the Ifugao District Jail to serve her sentence. This led to her children finally discovering the secret that she and her husband have been working hard to conceal.

Peejay knew that she hurt her children, so she did her best to show them that she had been working hard to change herself and that she was determined to be with them again. She applied for a plea bargain deal and became the first RDP in Ifugao to avail of such. Soon, she was sentenced to undergo ten months of in-house (detained) rehabilitation back at the IRC.

The road towards recovery, however, is not easy.

Peejay got distracted to fulfill her best-laid plans to regain her dignity and renew her life.  Various negative thoughts entered her mind, making her behave inappropriately during her first four months of detention.  But upon coming to understand how IRC sought to assist drug personalities like her from being stigmatized to becoming trusted members of the community, Peejay finally got her act together.

At IRC, RDPs like Peejay are provided with aftercare services that would help them stay sober and be productive until they are fully reintegrated back with their families and communities. IRC inspired the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) Yakap Bayan Framework of Intervention, an inter-agency collaborative framework which features the aftercare, reintegration, and transformation of RDPs. Through the Yakap Bayan, former drug dependents are transformed into community volunteers, and eventually advocates and community leaders who contribute to nation-building.

From a belligerent inmate, Peejay become involved in various activities at the camp. She willed herself to learn the principles and dynamics of drug abuse rehabilitation and eventually became adept with these. Soon, Peejay become a peer counsellor to her fellow clients at IRC. Her experiences and understanding of a drug user’s mental processes helped enrich the knowledge of the psychologists, social workers, policemen, and other personnel tasked with behavioral change activities at the camp. With her help, procedures were revised and new ones were created to respond to the needs of her fellow RDPs.

Regaining love and respect

In everything that she went through, what hurt Peejay the most was the fact that she failed her children by falling to drug abuse. Being separated from them, she felt miserable not being able to fulfill her responsibilities and missing important milestones in their lives. This used to cause her to undergo fits of depression, but her new-found role as a counselor to her fellow RDPs has helped her keep herself from being overcome by this condition.

Peejay’s ten-month sentence already ended, but she is still waiting for the court order. As she waits for her release, she continues to reinvent herself in preparation for the time when she would finally be reintegrated back to her family and regain her children’s love and respect—a  day when she would be able to mend the relationships broken by drug addiction. -30-