- By the time he was joining college, Kuria had become dependent on alcohol and soon started embezzling school fees without his parents’ knowledge.
- After receiving his salary, Kuria would disappear and only return when the money ran out, forcing him to eventually camp at his parents’ home in Kigumo.
Image: Alice Waithera
When Zachariah Kuria started drinking 20 years ago it was innocent fun influenced by his peers.
Kuria says he saw some of his popular friends drinking alcohol and thought it was ‘cool’ and decided to try it out.
He was in Form 2 and it soon became a habit that he juggled with smoking bhang.
By the time he was joining college, Kuria had become dependent on alcohol and soon started embezzling school fees without his parents’ knowledge.
A bar that was near his college soon became his favourite hangout and after he went broke he was employed as a casual in the premise.
He eventually dropped out of college.
After receiving his salary, Kuria would disappear and only return when the money ran out, forcing him to eventually camp at his parents’ home in Kigumo.
There, he got more peers who encouraged his bad lifestyle by taking him to more drinking sprees.
“At first, it was beer but I slowly deteriorated and started taking chang’aa because my body needed stronger alcohol,” he said, noting that he engaged in extreme alcoholism for 20 years before he decided to reform.
He had lost hope, his wife left him as he sold most of his household items to buy alcohol.
Kuria recalls how a close friend lost his life after he went to their village bar only to find it closed.
“He just sat on the grass and collapsed as he waited for the bar to open,” he said.
He says the friend succumbed to delirium tremens, a severe alcohol withdrawal characterised by shaking, confusion and hallucinations.
This jolted Kuria back to his senses and caused him to realise how far off the track he had gone.
Soon after, the government began the countrywide fight against second generation alcohol that prompted the county government to start a free rehabilitation programme that saw over 1,000 addicts rehabilitated.
“I took myself to the rehab because I did not want to die and I took the programme very seriously,” he said.
After completing the three months programme, Kuria wanted to help others suffering from addiction and went back to college.
He is now a certified addiction counsellor working with the celebrated administration police sergeant Moses Kimenchu, also known as ‘Sergeant Saviour’ for his efforts in rehabilitating addicts.
Kimenchu shot into the limelight in 2012 when he started going round schools sensitising students about drugs abuse and rehabilitating addicts.
Many people credit their reformation to Kimenchu who received a Head of State Commendation for his efforts to fight addiction in 2018.
Kimenchu is now stationed at the police headquarters in Nairobi runs a community based rehabilitation centre in Murang’a town in partnership with the county government.
“The county government helps with the medication while we handle the daily upkeep of the addicts,” he noted, adding that he receives most of the addicts from the county referral hospital.
Kuria, 42, said he met Kimenchu after he suffered from severe withdrawal syndrome that caused him to collapse soon after joining the rehabilitation programme.
As he laid on the ground shaking vigorously, other addicts milled around him attracting Kimenchu’s attention.
“I have been sober seven years now and got my wife and children back. Having gone through that, I can confidently tell addicts that it is not hard to reform,” he said.
Kimenchu noted that rehabilitation services in the country are too expensive, costing over Sh300,000, which makes them inaccessible to many.
With his Motto 'Kaa Sober, Chapa Kazi', Kimenchu said his vision is to establish a big rehabilitation facility that will accommodate more people.
He said the fight against drugs addiction requires a lot of facilitation, adding that there are only three public rehabilitation centres in the country.
A reformed alcoholic himself, Kimenchu has helped rehabilitate 198 men through the centre including cigarettes, bhang and substance addicts who include active or interdicted government officers.
“We ask families with addicts to bring them to our facility so they can get help,” he said.