(Last Updated on May 6, 2022 by zimdaily)
Article by: Portia Sunhwa
When it comes to drug and alcohol addiction, Brian Mulipah is the truest game changer that this generation of drug misuse has seen. With the “dira rizare” statement disseminating on all social media platforms, it has become apparent that drug and alcohol misuse is now rampant. Brian Mulipah is a certified professional recovery coach who started the organization TOV NATION, for Addiction and Recovery Support.
This organization helps people to prevail over any addiction. In an interview in “Enlightening the Youth”, Brian said that they help both men and women who struggle with compulsive behaviors such as drinking, smoking, gambling, hypersexuality, codependency and any other addictive substances. All it’s done through recovery coaching. Brian started his “helping others” journey in 2004 when he did his Addictive Behaviour Counseling training at the University of Nations in Amsterdam – Netherlands. He then went on to do his Addiction Specialist training in Egypt in 2008, then started working full-time in the treatment field in 2009. He has been helping people who are using crystal meth and cocaine since 2011.
After having his share of addiction to alcohol, and diazepam, while also chronically abusing marijuana, the drive of wanting to help friends around him who had been using drugs became the inspiration of him starting this organization.
He mentioned many types of drugs but the ones that cause more damages is nicotine from smoking and he said it is responsible for 72% of drug related deaths, while alcohol stands at 26%, then the rest of the drugs that include stimulants such as cocaine, and crystal Methamphetamine (guka, mutoriro), depressants like diazepam, glue, and others are at a whooping 2% combined. However, drugs like crystal meth have made some noise as their withdrawal symptoms include the scary hallucinations, and psychosis, etc.
The main cause of Youths or anyone to be a drug addict or to be an addict is unresolved adverse childhood experiences that lead to trauma. In other words, a series of circumstances and life happened and that person didn’t not get enough intrepidity to handle trauma for some reason.
Reasons may include that the person simply did not have the internal resources or capacity to address the situations. The base of everything is trauma which will lead to the shattering of an individual. if a Person is shattered then the relationships are shattered, be love relationships, family relationships, business relationships to mention a few
To help Youths as a nation or society, we need to know and understand that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety or the unavailability of drugs. The opposite of addiction is connection and community. As people, we need to learn that people need to connect with other people in joyful relationships.
We can take away all the drugs in the world but still people are still going to get addicted because we are not addressing the issue of connection we need to address the issue of parenting, parents need to be educated on how to love, support and spare time for their children so that Youths can unreserved or open up to them whenever there is a situation to avoid trauma.
As much as we know there is a spiritual side, addiction is not simply demonic. it’s an expression of what’s inside and when someone approaches me and say they have an addiction I ask “Why are they in pain, and how come they don’t have enough internal resources to handle it“ said Brian Mulipah. According to him it’s a normal expression of something wrong .If you are struggling with an addiction the answer is connection to a community, look for people that you can talk to accept also that you need help rather than being in denial. Although interventions can be done on those who are in denial and don’t want help, nobody can really force anyone to successfully get treatment. Throwing someone into a detox facility may delay their next use, but it will not make them overcome addiction. Let’s always remember that the opposite of addiction is connection.