Through the eyes of little Jenjen

My name is Lito Gruet. Ex-model, ex-actor, ex-addict, ex-rehab director. In my 16 years as an incorrigible addict, I witnessed first hand the destructiveness of addiction. After I made a choice to change, it has been my life’s mission to help fight drug abuse.

At  six-feet with Spanish mestizo looks, I was usually mistaken as a foreigner and once was approached by a drug-using mother with her 14-year-old addict daughter. “Sir, sasama ang anak ko sayo. Mag good-time kayo. Pagamitin nyo lang kami ng ‘bato’ kung wala kang cash”( Sir, my daughter can go with you for a good time, in exchange for making us use shabu if you don’t have cash). Imagine seeing young children being prostituted by their own parents/relatives in exchange for drugs. Imagine babies being sold or used as collateral to finance the drug dealing of pushers. Imagine little Jennifer growing up in an environment surrounded by pushers, users and criminals. Imagine what future she would have? During my 16 years as an addict, I quit my life as an actor and a model to become a full-blown drug user. And from the glitz and glamour of celebrity life, I eventually found myself spending most of my time in the slums, freeloading on pushers and users alike. I then experienced first-hand the destructiveness of the drug world affecting almost everyone there… including innocent children.

I used to sleep in a drug pusher’s house uninvited and saw little Jenjen strutting around, playing inside their cramped shanty, oblivious to the drug menace surrounding her life. Jenjen must have been four or five years old, and it is only now after I have been 17 years sober that I wonder what has become of her. For in her little home, everyone was a pusher! Father, mother, kuya and ate all pushed drugs and had their own customers which meant for almost 24 hours, addicts were shuttling in and out of her house which also doubled as a drug den, a common practice in the slums. Jenjen would witness customers and her own family use drugs in front of her, not caring if she inhaled the fumes, not caring for her health, not caring for her future. The whole day, whichever little room she would enter, drug addicts were there using drugs.

And to Jenjen and her calloused family, this was “normal.” Even if she played outside her home, addiction was everywhere because almost all the neighbors were competing in the drug trade. When stocks would run out at home, they would send Jenny to her uncle’s house or to her “ninangs” to pick up and deliver drugs for them, knowing she will never get jailed if caught. Jenjen became a courier at five years old! I did not think much of it then since I was too focused on getting my next fix. I too saw it as “normal.” Since this was during the mid-’90’s, little Jennifer must be about 28 years old by now.

I wonder what has happened to that innocent little girl. Did she finish school? Did she fulfill her dreams? Or has she become a prostitute like her neighbors? Maybe she became an addict and a pusher too just like everyone else in that “normal” neighborhood. I wonder if little Jenjen is still alive…. or rotting in some stinking jail. Addiction kills not just the body … it kills the soul!

LITO GRUET,

lgruet.kbp@gmail.com