Sto­ries by Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Af­ter be­ing trapped in the dark­ness of ad­dic­tion, Rhea Kassie is hop­ing to bring light on the ur­gent need to break stig­mas at­tached to sub­stance abuse.

The young mar­ket ven­dor said while she con­tin­ues to take blows in her bat­tle for a health­i­er life, she is not sur­ren­der­ing.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Kassie said as her 30th birth­day dawned, her life had been shat­tered by al­co­hol ad­dic­tion.

She said, “I start­ed drink­ing at the age of 12, that is when my grand­moth­er died. Things be­came re­al­ly re­al­ly hard try­ing to cope from young has al­ways been a strug­gle.”

Kassie ex­plained that her de­pen­den­cy on al­co­hol would grow over the years as her dreams grad­u­al­ly be­came over­shad­owed by life’s rigours and chal­lenges.

“It used to be hard be­cause we as kids had to go out there. Me and two of my broth­ers had to go to the mar­ket and walk around and sell dasheen bush and make we dol­lar to save to car­ry to school to buy some­thing the days our moth­er didn’t have to give us, and my fa­ther was nev­er around, so it was very hard for us​​​​​​​.”

She added: “There were times when we had no mon­ey and I end­ed up drop­ping out of school in Form Three be­cause I was work­ing and I couldn’t man­age both. I re­al­ly tried.”

Kassie ac­knowl­edged that as her so­lace in al­co­hol’s numb­ing ef­fect even­tu­al­ly wore off, it re­vealed a bro­ken young woman who re­cent­ly made a plea for med­ical as­sis­tance on so­cial me­dia as she grap­pled with al­co­holic liv­er cir­rho­sis.

“At a young age, it just de­stroys your whole ca­reer, your whole fu­ture, what­ev­er you plan for, al­co­hol abuse just de­stroys it. I want the youth to un­der­stand that turn­ing to al­co­hol is not the right path to go down, the con­se­quences are se­vere,” she said.

Kassie, who lives with her moth­er and rel­a­tives in Va­len­cia, has come to terms with her life’s de­ci­sion. She wants her sto­ry to res­onate with the na­tion’s youth as she recog­nis­es the mount­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and pres­sures some maybe un­der which would sub­se­quent­ly leave them turn­ing to sub­stance abuse as a form of re­lief.

“Don’t ever think you can’t reach out to some­one, there is al­ways some­one who you can speak with about your strug­gles, you are nev­er alone,” she said.

De­clin­ing health has forced the 29-year-old woman to con­front the con­se­quences of her ad­dic­tion.

Re­cent­ly, she has been ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions for liv­er dis­ease and, for just over a year, she has bro­ken away from the clutch­es of al­co­holism.

The young farmer, who is still in need of ur­gent med­ical as­sis­tance, is hop­ing that her bat­tle serves as a sober­ing re­minder of the im­pact of ad­dic­tion as well as the need for aware­ness and des­tigma­ti­za­tion, es­pe­cial­ly among the youth.

Any­one wish­ing to con­tact Kassie can call 495 3402.