Because of the sensitive nature of the subject under discussion, Richard, aged 32, prefers that I don’€™t identify him by his full name. This man was once a respected and high-earning accountant. But now he has  lost his job, thanks to his addiction to methamphetamine or crystal meth, notoriously known as tik. Like many people in the Western Cape, Richard discovered the cost of being addicted to tik  when it was  too late.

‘€œAddiction is really a disease of loss. You lose your relationship with your parents. You lose your relationship with real friends. You lose your job. You lose your freedom ‘€“ you end up in jail. You lose all financial resources that you had’€, says Richard with a shaky voice.

Tik is a white, odourless bitter-tasting crystalline powder. Its ingredients can easily be accessed making it easy for drug pushers to manufacture it, even at home.

Richard was introduced to this drug early this year by a sex worker who regularly visited him at his flat. But, he was already accustomed to using drugs before then. He used ecstasy and cocaine at the time, which he says, ‘€œdrove up’€ his sex drive and made him turn to  sex workers.

The addiction pushed him into credit card debt of more than R50  000. However, like all addicts, that did not stop him from coming up with innovative ways of getting more of the substance into his system. He thought switching to tik would ease the financial burden he had accumulated.

‘€œWhen I started to use tik I was under the impression that it would be cheaper and last longer than cocaine because I had started to spend so much money on cocaine. The disease of addiction is a disease of wanting more and I ended up trying tik. Little did I know what was in store for me’€, Richard tells me.

‘€œTik made me stay awake’€, Richard says of the high that he got from using tik.

‘€œThe last weekend that I was in active addiction I was awake for four days in a row without a single second of sleep’€, he adds.

But now he wants to stop using drugs. He has been in rehab at a private clinic in the southern suburbs of Cape Town for almost three months. This, after police arrested him for drug possession, an event he says he ‘€œwill forever cherish’€.

‘€œThe only reason I stopped using tik is because I got arrested by the police. If it hadn’€™t been for them I could happily have gone on using tik, I don’€™t know for how long’€, he says with a sombre expression.  

Tik abuse is a serious challenge in the Western Cape Province.

‘€œAfter alcohol and, perhaps, dagga, Tik accounts for the biggest single proportion of people that we are admitting to treatment centres for counselling and assistance’€, says Dr Rodger Meyer, an addiction specialist.

‘€œAnd the other, perhaps more distressing feature of the growth of tik use, is the fact that increasingly younger kids are getting caught in the web of tik use and tik dependence because of the rapid tolerance and dependence producing effects of tik’€, he continues.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) has found that the average age of patients who reported tik as their primary substance of abuse in the second half of 2008 was 24 years and 73% were males. However, the study has also found that boys as young as 12 abuse the drug.

If Richard really wants to live a drug-free life, he may be able to acquire possessions that he has lost and to re-establish ties with family and friends, but the damage to his brain may take even longer to reverse or may not even be reversible.

‘€œTik fries your synapses. The prolonged use of tik causes brain damage, even long after the drug has left your system’€, warns Dr Meyer.