ADDICTION

My name is Obi Okoro. Okoro is my mum’s surname, she told me nothing about my dad except that he was dead. Well, here’s the real story.

Way before I was born, my mum lost 3 pregnancies not because of physical assault from my father but due to alcohol and smoking. While I was newly formed in her womb, my dad left her because even as a doctor he couldn’t save those babies’ lives. Well, you can confidently say I was a miracle baby because surprisingly I survived the toxic things my mum took in.

Like a self-pollinated plant’s offspring, I was everything like mum. I wouldn’t say it was entirely my fault because as I was growing, I would play with alcohol bottles as if they were my siblings and when my friends presented it in coated words, I didn’t think twice as I saw it as a means to forget home troubles. From a “baby boy” who frowned at every sip of alcohol or smoke, I became the boss of my gang. As a blind man can’t show another blind man the way, my mum didn’t find fault in my lifestyle, and of course, we had the same predicament. Besides that, she loved me as every drunkard mother would love her son and she loved having me around after all, the more the merrier.

Every bad guy needs a good girl and Obi Okoro had Keji. I had no idea why she stuck with me but I loved her.

I maneuvered my way into university with a lot of money because like mum told me, I had to get that certificate. University life was “the bomb”, there wasn’t any disciplinarian in from of a teacher holding a cane to tell you what and what not to do. I was a free bird and every bird has its limit, the sky. I, Well I flew to space and got expelled after “breaking” a guy’s head with a bottle. I didn’t wait for the expulsion letter of course, so I ran away to lay low for a while because I knew I would be wanted by the police.

Like every “lover girl”, Keji came often to visit, most times with a well-formulated speech on how to live my life right. On one of her speech days, precisely night, I was very high on the influence of alcohol. I got so frustrated by her words and barged out of the house, into a car, which I wasn’t sure was mine or Kejis’ and into the night.

As fate would have it, mum was looking out for me that very night. I was zooming as if I was playing a car racing video game only that the screen gradually became blurry. The steering wheel split into two as that was how to blur my vision had become. in a blink of an eye, my car hit another head-on… Fairly conscious, I heard cars pulling over to behold the scene it was in. I recognized a car in front of mine which resembled my mums’. I thought to myself “was it the one I had…” my eyes shut.

I awoke from a coma. I felt like a puppet as a medical apparatus acted as strings for my body. The doctor wasn’t facing me but it was as if he was wiping his tears secretly.

A nurse came in and shocked to see the doctor in his state she didn’t shut the door. I suddenly remembered my mother when a hospital worker was wheeling a dead body across the door of the room I was in. The stretcher’s wheel got stuck right in front of the door and as the nurse bent to correct the wheel I immediately removed all strings attached to my body like a puppet free of its master and staggered toward the body. The doctor and nurse ran after me after noticing my escape. I removed the cloth from the body’s face and it turned out to be my mother. The nurse and doctor struggled to pull me back to my bed, I asked the doctor in tears if it was her I had hit. The doctor confirmed it and I ran back to her body, placed my head on her bosom, and breathed my last.

After I died, the doctor behaved rather too moved with our story. He told the nurse that he would take the rest of the night off. Out of nowhere, Keji runs into the room I was being treated and found it empty of me. She sights the doctor holding a briefcase walking towards her but heading for the hospital exit. She runs to him and out of anger and pain from the loss of her love, she rough handles the doctor, and his briefcase drops. Hospital documents and pictures amongst other things fly out of it. Keji recognizes a photo of the one she just lost, she hurries to get it and to her amazement, they were pictures of me and some of my mum. The doctor, Mr. Adewale Olaitan, my father, and my mum’s husband slowly slides down the wall and sits on the floor crying out in pain. Keji had lost her love, Mr. Adewale had lost his family.

you might be wondering if it’s my ghostwriting this Story. let me just say it’s my storytelling itself through the mind of another. Addiction starts with just a sip of alcohol and a sniff of hard drugs.

An addiction story without divine intervention doesn’t have a happy ending. SAY NO TO ALCOHOL ADDICTION!!!

THE END.

Written by Toluwani Abiodun – One of the top participants of the ‘Tell your story’ contest on our Facebook page.