PHOTO/Courtesy.
The harsh reality of drug addiction is that most addicts fail when they attempt to quit on their own.
Qute Kaye, a musician once highly esteemed by Ugandans, tried to break the grip of his addiction to drugs and alcohol, but whenever he experienced withdrawal symptoms, he felt hopeless that recovery is within his reach.
This went on, until he turned to God, and also focused on rehabilitation.
“I was working on a project with my band and we decided to employ more people. Among the new employees, there were some who used to use drugs and I was influenced by peer pressure. It is not good to be curious about things you don’t know,” he stated.
“I continued using drugs because I started experiencing withdrawal symptoms. I would wake up feeling weak and in pain so I resorted to buying more drugs to help me function normally. You couldn’t tell I was using drugs unless I told you,” he said.
At his lowest point, Qute Kaye said he took drugs every day just to “feel okay.”
“I was ignorant about rehab and I was trapped in a cycle. I was terrified because I was relying heavily on these drugs to feel okay and it was eating me slowly. I hid it for about a year before the public discovered I was an addict,” he said.
“The media leaked the news of my addiction to the public after some journalists saw me in my car using (drugs). When my mum found out through the media that I was an addict, it broke her heart and she sent me to rehab where I spent three months before relapsing,” he said.
Qute Kaye explained Friday during his appearance on ‘Mwasuze Mutya’, a program hosted by Faridah Nakazibwe on NTV Uganda that it was “divine intervention” that helped him “get clean.”
“I felt that God had given me another chance,” he said. “I woke up one day and walked myself into rehab. It was divine intervention that helped me get clean.”
The singer has since started an organisation called, ‘Another Chance Foundation’ to offer help to drug addicts in the country.
He believes addiction is the root cause of violence in society, adding that drug addicts commit crimes just to earn money “to get their fix.”
“A person that is sick needs help, not condemnation and that’s what we do as Another Chance Foundation,” he said.
“I think the phrase “abusing drugs” should be the opposite because it’s the drugs that abuse you. Addiction implies that you are hooked on something. It is a mental disorder,” he stated
“When I came out of rehab, the mistake I made was wanting to resume my life as though nothing had happened and this slowly led me back to the path of destruction. It was a very tough period for me and very real. I could have died,” he told Faridah Nakazibwe.
