Former Meth Junkie Starts Centre to Help Drug Abusers, Alcoholics Conquer their Addictions (Courtesy of The Straits Times)

By Wong Kim Hoh
Senior Writer

Still waters run deep.

How true.

Alaric Tan looks bookish.

Soft-spoken and slight of build, with a high forehead and big protruding ears, he dresses neatly, wears Harry Potter glasses and articulates his thoughts cogently in immaculate English. The placidity he exudes, however, belies a turbulent past.

Up until a year ago, the 40-year-old was a crystal meth junkie with an addiction so intense that he needed to consume 1mm of crystal meth or GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate) every hour to function.
Also known as the date rape drug, GHB is a central nervous system depressant.
For nearly two decades, Mr Tan took drugs as a form of escape from a life scarred by abuse, depression and guilt - over his sexuality.

Today, he has tamed his demons and is hell-bent on helping other tortured souls battling their pain with drugs.

Last year, he founded The Greenhouse, a centre which offers various recovery programmes to help drug abusers and alcoholics clean up their act.

"Everything I went through has got me to this point where I can be of service to other people.
"I will devote the rest of my life to helping people who want to stop using drugs and find recovery," he says with quiet conviction.

He is the second of three sons from a Catholic family. His late father was a senior civil servant. His mother, now retired, was a secretary. Until the age of seven, he was left in the care of a babysitter, returning home only on weekends. "I felt I didn't belong there, even though they took good care of me. I'd insist on eating porridge with soya sauce; I didn't want to impose on them. My foster family were very confused by my behaviour," he says. "One of my first memories was holding my mother's hand, walking somewhere and asking her if I was her son."

When he was seven, he moved back home. Sadly, he did not find the stability he craved. His parents were then going through a rocky patch in their marriage and were fighting all the time. "I remember often hiding under the dining table and waiting for the shouting to stop. I was frightened all the time and always waiting for something bad to happen." To make matters worse, he was physically and emotionally abused by a relative.
Declining to go into details, he says he never told his parents about it. "I was afraid that if I said anything, my parents wouldn't want me anymore and would send me away," says the former student of Westlake Primary School.

Adolescence proved equally painful. On the surface, he appeared to be doing well. He got his black belt in taekwondo, was president of the students' council at Maris Stella High School and attended many leadership camps. "I was well liked and my father had high hopes for me. He wanted me to go into the civil service too," he says. But Mr Tan harboured a secret: he was attracted to boys. At 15, he took the bold step of coming out to his parents when they went out for dinner one night. The episode unfolded like a scene from a movie.
"My mother started crying and a waitress who was walking past dropped a pot of hot tea on my father's lap. He was so stunned he didn't even feel the pain." "Instead, they did something which they thought was in my best interest at that time. They tried to fix and change me."

Mr Tan was sent for conversion therapy with several therapists.

Conversion or reparative therapy is the practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation from gay or bisexual to heterosexual. "I ended up seeing a therapist every week for 10 years," he says quietly. The sessions didn't work. "Instead, I just felt that there was something dirty, shameful and broken about me which I needed to hide. If not, people wouldn't love and accept me. "My father even told me not to use my full name in public. So I used Ric. I felt that I didn't even own my name."

Not long after starting therapy, he fell into clinical depression. "I was put on different types of anti-depressants, one after another, for 10 years." He winces when asked why he went along with his parents when he knew the sessions were not working.

Unlike today, Mr Tan says, there was no detailed research in the 1990s to show the effects of conversion therapy. A 2009 review of conversion therapy between 1963 and 2007 by an American Psychological Association task force found that besides being ineffective, such therapies could increase the risk of negative outcomes including anxiety, depression and suicidal feelings. "I loved my parents a lot and I knew they meant well and wanted to help me. I felt that I disappointed them so badly I should just go along with it. It was my way of being a dutiful son."

His acquiescence and the double life he lived took a big toll. "I didn't have a support network. I felt like a dog which had been beaten badly. You know you can't get close to dogs like that." When he finally walked away after 10 years, his mother broke down. "She thought I had given up on myself." Despite his turmoil, he did well enough in his A levels to read English language and English literature at the National University Of Singapore.
Although interested in a teaching career, he did not pursue it. "Teaching is a huge responsibility, I was not sure if I could handle it."

Not long after graduating, he went for a holiday in Bangkok where a friend convinced him to take half an Ecstasy tablet. "The void in my life suddenly seemed filled and I felt everything was going to be OK. It was a powerful feeling for me because I'd been living in fear for so long," he says. Around this time, an architect friend got him a project to organise an event at a sauna. He did such a good job that he was offered full-time employment as an operations and programme manager. He stayed for seven years before starting his own outlet with a couple of friends. The venture afforded him a good income, which allowed him to indulge in his drug habit that gradually became chronic. From a couple of times a year while on holiday, he soon needed a fix not just daily but hourly. Ecstasy and ketamine made way for crystal meth and GHB. He made several attempts to become clean.

In August 2014, he checked himself into an expensive rehabilitation facility in Chiangmai. "The doctor joined all the dots for me. For the first time, I understood what addiction was." It is, he explains, a dependence on mind-or mood-altering substances in order to function because of some kind of trauma in one's developmental years. "Because the mind does not know how to process what has happened, it pushes the force button which has the unfortunate effect of replaying the pain over and over again." The drugs, he says, are not the problem. "They are an attempt to solve the problem. The problem is we're trying to self-medicate because we're trying to take the pain away." Understanding his situation didn't make his attempts to go clean easy.

In 2016, he was arrested by anti-narcotics officers while picking up his fix from a dealer. He was sent to a drug rehabilitation centre for six months, and placed under home detention for another six months. "In many ways, it was a turning point. Because there was no access, I was forced to function without drugs. It showed me that I didn't need them to function, and that I was stronger than I thought I was."

Upon his release, he started attending a support group which conducts a 12-step recovery programme for addicts, and became active in the group. He suffered three relapses during this period. "It seems so counter-intuitive and illogical, doesn't it?" he says, chuckling at the irony. "But addiction is a baffling disease. It's the only one which tells us we do not have a problem. It's like a defence mechanism. Each time we feel pain, we feel the need to numb it immediately."

Even though he was practising the methods he was taught, mastering them took time, with the risks of a relapse ever present. "Many people see relapse as a sign of failure, but relapse can help us realise what our triggers are and learn how to do things differently." The pivotal point in his journey took place when he went to a recovery meeting after getting a fix in July last year. "I was sweating and paranoid and everyone at the meeting knew I hadn't slept for days. But no one judged me... If these people could love and accept me at my worst, there was no reason why I can't love and accept myself." That realisation, he says, changed everything.
"I completely lost the desire to use drugs anymore. I knew I could do better."

He has not looked back since.

Among other things, he started chairing meetings at the support group, sponsoring addicts and working with community organisations on recovery programmes, as well as visiting hospitals to talk about addiction and recovery. He also completed a science-based recovery course called Smart Recovery so that he could offer it to addicts in Singapore, and hopes to enrol in a counselling course soon.

As he became immersed in community work, he started identifying loopholes he could plug. "There are a lot of outfits, especially for LGBTs (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender), which offer services which are relevant and good. But they are underfunded and work in silos," says Mr Tan, who still draws a decent income as a director in the business he set up . That's when he decided to set up The Greenhouse in Rowell Road.
"It's a safe place for things to grow," he says, explaining the choice of name. "We wanted a more integrated approach by offering all recovery programmes under one roof." To finance his project, he sold his car and rented out his apartment in the east. He moved back to live with his mother, who worked with him to set up The Greenhouse.

He says she felt guilt over what she subjected him to and was relieved to have him back. His father died two years ago. "My mother and I put in $70,000 to set up and run this place. "I wanted her to be involved so that she knows what I'm doing," says Mr Tan, adding that he intends to apply for government grants and raise funds for The Greenhouse. Over the past year, more than 80 addicts have benefited from its programmes.
"Many of them were broken, ashamed and didn't know how to function. I can't describe what it feels like to see them opening up and accepting themselves for who they are," says Mr Tan, who is unattached.
He hopes to grow The Greenhouse into more than just an addiction-recovery centre, but one which offers programmes such as yoga, meditation and other wellness initiatives.

"I want it to be a safe place for people to be themselves and take care of themselves, a place where they can develop a support network which will help them manage in times of crisis.
"That way, they won't think of taking drugs when trouble comes." "

Source : https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/long-hard-road-to-tame-his-demons

Video interview of our Founder, Alaric Tan, by The Straits Times

“I was very clear that the only way I was going to be able to continue staying clean is to have good (recovery) programmes around” - Alaric