A man who vow to save Children from a torment he stills suffers.

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Steve has been battling to save children from addiction.
He is the man who got up from his death bed vowing to save children from the torment he still suffer.

 By Gerrishon Sirere

 Most of youths are thrilled by that the 'show' has got them out of a tedious lesson.
They've heard this guy with the lined face and tough eyes is different, he's been there, big time. Steve plays each audience as it comes.

Steve tells me about a scenario where he saw kids surreptitiously sliding dope into friend's pocket. They know. They're the experts. They're 15 years old.

The runaway girl who hooked up with Steve

    That was the age of a runaway girl who hooked up with Steve. She already had the flat, blank eyes of someone who'd cut herself loose from hope. She pestered Steve for weeks to help her 'shoot up', ignoring his shouts to wise up and get lost.
Eventually she wore him down.

Carefully, he chose the vein in her groin. After a couple of seconds, he felt her body relax and she fell backwards onto the couch.

His blue-jeaned legs are taut, his face etched with the lines that years of drugging, drinking, electric-shock therapy and near-death experiences have carved. His eyes and cheeks are hollow and he's having massive dental reconstruction; his teeth were destroyed by the heat mandrax creates as it's sucked through a broken bottleneck. His dentist tells him of primary school kids who come in with cracked teeth caused by the same heat.
When he started school, over 50 years ago, about 10% of kids abused drugs. Today, he says it's more like 80% who are drinking, drugging or both. Now is not the time for him to stop. Irritation flashes across his scars.
He speaks with the crusading zeal of a convert, which comes wrapped in the addiction he wakes up to each morning. He lives by the AA and dictum: Live one day at a time.
People ask him how long he has been clean and he explains that is not the point. It's been over 18 years for him but he knows a person who was clean for 30 years and the craked.

Music can trigger a craving. Beer lurking in a friend's potjiekos, nearly hooked Steve again. Cough mixture, shaving lotion, homeopathic drops can contain alcohol.

'We were taught in the army, "Know your enemy," My enemy could be the hotel chef who puts wine in the sauce,' he says.
The 'enemy', initially, was his dad. The alcoholic who, with what seemed like 79 brandies in his gut, pulled his six year old son onto his lap and forced him to drive home along a busy highway. The constant family tears, screaming and beating took a second place to Steve's greatest craving: affection and approval from the dad he adored.
A craving that turned to rejection and then hatred as his family fell apart and his mother left home with his baby sister.
A hatred that turned to disgust when the drugged teenager was chucked into a police cell one night and recognised a familiar figure too drunk to recognise him.

His father eventually stopped drinking- and never touched a drop again to the day he died of a heart attack, which just happened to kill him the day he and Steve had their most vicious exchange of words ever. His family had been reunited but, as Steve heard the news and saw his father's shoes returned home in a paper bag, he took to his heels and kept running, deeper and deeper into the drug territory.

For the next 10 years he abused every drug he could- from dagga to crack cocaine, mandrax and heroin. He pimped, robbed and nearly killed for drugs. He was in and out of hospitals, 11 rehabilitation centres and jail.
Steve will not recommend rehab centres, insisting methods that involve using medicine (drugs) don't work.

A rehab Centre

'You need hugs, not drugs. Abstinence is the only way, because once an addict, always an addict,' he insists. 'Of course there's a place for rehabilitation, but if you're serious about it- go clean. Legal drugs can kill you- know your poison and avoid it,' he says as he chain smokes. 'Yes, this will me too, eventually.'

Steve stopped drugging the day he lost the will to live. As he lay dying in a rehab ward, he was aware of people praying around him, of the intense love of his mother, who never gave up on him and is still, always there for him. He became aware of a voice, saying, 'They're lying to my children. Save my children.'
He got up, walked past the duty sister who tried in vain to get him back into bed and began talking to rehab patients.

He's not stopped talking since. He talks about the alcohol that young pupils mix into their school fruit juice bottle; about dagga that giggling kids smoke in school toilets; about the lies: One puff won't hurt. A few drinks won't harm you. 'What they don't know is that doing drugs can unmask or aggravate any dormant psychological disorder, whether it's a quick temper or undiagnosed schizophrenia.'

When parents ask how they can prevent their children from abusing alcohol or drugs, he tells them stuff they don't wanna hear, like spend time with them, get down on your knees and hug them, eyeball them as you give them the love and approval that will satisfy cravings better than any drug ever will.