Episode Details

Smacked, Hooked and Crashed with Melinda Ferguson

My guest this week has an extraordinary story of recovery to share - she’s gone from a homeless heroin addict living on the streets of Joburg to a highly respected public figure here in SA.  Melinda Ferguson is an award-winning South African journalist and author of bestselling memoirs Smacked, Hooked and Crashed. She is also a publisher and runs writing courses to help people find their voice.

In this Episode

• Growing up in an alcoholic household Melinda took to booze at an early age – describing it as a “piece of heaven”
• As she got older she rejected alcohol as she hated to see her mother drinking so turned towards hard drugs, taking her first hit of heroin at the age of 24.
• As a film maker she managed to stay relatively functional for a couple of years – she always had it in mind that she would be able to stop whenever she wanted to
• I think a lot of us drinkers are like that – thinking we could stop anytime, its only when we actually try to quit or even to cut down that we realise we have become dependent
• When she became pregnant Melinda realized that she was hooked and couldn’t stop – continuing to use throughout her two pregnancies – always planning to stop “tomorrow” but of course tomorrow never came
• Her two babies were taken away from her but even then she couldn’t stop using
• Rock bottom came for Melinda when she found herself living on the streets as an addict.
• Her family removed her from that situation and moved her to a “homeless farm” which happened to be full of alcoholics – so that’s when alcohol re-appeared in her life.
• When she was discovered drinking and smoking dagga she was asked to leave – this was a real wake up call – about to be made homeless from a farm for the homeless was her “desperation awakening” as she calls it
• She finally accepted that she had a problem and would have to stop using drugs
• The only place she had to go was back “home” with her mom – where she had to cope with alcohol in the house and seeing her mom and stepdad drinking every evening.
• At this point in her life she had no money, no car, no decent clothes but she did have AA/NA meeting to go to every night which kept her on track
• At these meetings she “surrendered” – finally acknowledging that she needed help – something that we agreed was the hardest thing of all.
• Melinda had got to the stage when “enough is enough” – I also remember getting to that stage where I thought “I can’t do this any more”
• That’s not a bad think and makes me think of a quote from JK Rowling “my rock bottom became the foundation for the rest of my life”
• With hindsight she can see that her surrender was actually her strength – not her weakness
• Year 1 of her recovery was extremely difficult – just a matter of getting through each day until her evening AA/NA meeting – she felt very depressed and was barely functional
• After 2 years in recovery she sensed what she calls an awakening of the spirit and by 5 years she was reconnecting with herself and getting results
• We talked about the length of time people spend “in recovery” and agreed that we have to be patient – it also varies a lot – someone with a drinking problem who was able to hold down a job and a relationship is likely to recover more quickly than someone who has hit rock bottom due to hard drugs – all depends on how much you have “messed up” as Melinda put it!
• Have a listen to Tribe Sober podcast episode 61 (released in September 2021) – I’m talking to rehab doctor Dr Dawn who explains that in the rehabs they have a rule of thumb that it takes a month of recovery for every year that we’ve been using..
• Realising that she was in it for the long haul helped Melinda and she stopped being so hard on herself, she stopped comparing herself with others and beg