Smacked, it's one hell of a ride

Michelle McGrane in conversation with Melinda Ferguson

Smacked by Melinda Ferguson ISBN 1-77007-048-6 Oshun Books

Melinda Ferguson is the senior feature writer for True Love magazine. Shortlisted for several prestigious awards, including the Revlon Woman of Courage, she devotes her time to writing and speaking publicly about her battle with drug addiction and raising her sons.

Smacked: A Harrowing True Story of Addiction and Survival is the raw account of Ferguson's relationship with heroin and crack cocaine, her headlong tumble into an addiction which robbed her of everything she cared about. For six years, she was driven by one motivating force: the next hit. For this she would abandon her promising film-making career, lose her comfortable suburban home, her husband, her two children and, in a gruelling finale of remorseless self-destruction, herself.

Rescued from the maw of Hillbrow's drug and prostitution underworld, Melinda not only survived, but recovered to tell the story of how an intelligent, middle-class young woman from Jo'burg hit rock bottom, face first, and clawed her way back to redemption.

Melinda, tell me a little about your early years and what you were like as a child. To what extent do you think your family environment contributed to your addictions?

I was a pretty confused child, I think. I was four when my dad died of a heart attack in front of me and this experience became a very formative and traumatic one for me. After his death our home seemed to grow dark and depressed. It was as though the walls and ceilings got higher and I got smaller. My mother was very shocked and now had four children to raise alone and so she started drinking. So, I guess I was brought up in an alcoholic household and I began to drink at about the age of ten. I spent a lot of time in fantasyland, imagining freeing myself from my home and being somewhere else. Alcohol and drugs would later become a perfect escape route for me.

In Smacked you write of your mother: "I'm actually quite scared of her, she's German and sometimes she looks like one of those SS guards outside the gas ovens where they sent the Jews to in Auschwitz." And in the next chapter: "Motherbitch never looked at anything full on … She made a pact with death to hold its candle for the daddy who had jumped ship, and widow whittle her life away. Motherbitch made us pay, as only one so disappointed with life can." Have you reconciled the effect your alcoholic mother had on you when you were growing up?

Well, I think I am busy doing that right now, it doesn't just go away over night - the resentments and the damage. My mother died last year of an alcohol-related cancer and in the year leading to her death I tried to make peace with her in the best way I could. The book has also been an attempt to clear old anger.

At the age of ten you stole your first drink from the liquor cabinet at home. What was your relationship with alcohol after that?

Oh I loved it - I buried myself in it, I longed for it and thirsted for it continuously.

Will you describe your experience of bulimia as a teenager?

Read the book! Seriously, it was a nightmare being addicted to and reliant on food, one of the worst substances to be addicted to because you need it to survive and it's so easy to abuse it because it's legal and very available.

Who were your greatest creative influences in your teens? Did you always love reading? When did you start writing?

The poet Sylvia Plath perhaps, like she may still do for many teenage girls - really blew my mind. I loved her and related to her. I was also hugely influenced by Bob Marley and a lot of Brit bands like Joy Division and Madness. I did love reading as a teenager and I journalled in a diary from about the age of eleven or twelve. Writing my thoughts down was a great escape for me.

"I have a gun in my mouth …" Smacked opens with the brutal account of your gang rape at the hands of a Nigerian dealer and two gangsters. What was behind your decision to begin the book with your rape?

Well, I just thought it was a really huge turning point in my life, because after that my addiction and destruction of self really kicked in. Also just from a pure writer's point of view it is a very powerful way to open a book with an account of an event that immediately gets the viewer involved.

How do you define "drug addiction"?

I think it's a physical, mental and spiritual disease of "more, more, more". It's about wanting to fill a void really, an emptiness that never gets satiated.

How did drug addiction change your personality?

It made me into a monster, a criminal and a completely unfeeling person. The addiction made me greedy and I lost all sense of morality and decency. Oh, I could go on forever, but basically the need to score, and get more and more, completely dominated my life.

What was the worst thing you did as an addict?

I guess using drugs when I was pregnant. I am still trying to forgive myself for it. Although my two lovely sons are beautiful and healthy and intelligent today, I really feel that it could so easily have turned out differently. I am forever grateful that they are fine and hope that my experiences will help them one day to avoid the journey their father and I took in terms of drug addiction.

When did you realise that you had really hit bottom, that you couldn't carry on drugging?

Well, I suppose it was when I was kicked off the homeless farm for a second time that I really saw my life for what it was. I was surrounded by tramps and homeless people who were the derelicts of society - I was no better than or no different from them. My education, my upbringing, my brain and clever thoughts counted nothing here when I realised I had absolutely no place to go to. So, it was there that I surrendered. On 1 September 1999, I got real and began my journey in recovery, clean and sober.

What was the motivation behind your getting clean?

I think I had really hit a big, big horrible wall. There was literally nothing left in my life: no money, no hope, no job, no children, no family - nothing of meaning at all was left. I guess I was either going to die or I had to change my life and get clean.

Tell me about detox, withdrawal and rehabilitation.

I didn't go the conventional rehab route because I think my family was so sick of me and there was really just no money available to send me to a spot that would cost R20 000. I had a lot of withdrawals and mental anguish and insomnia and flashbacks and paranoia. It was a really bad, hard and awful time for me. I remember not being able to sleep for days and days.

What were the physical effects of drug usage, and how long did your body take to recover after you stopped using?

My body was really shot from drug abuse, but it's amazing how quickly the body wanted to heal once I stopped using and getting healthy. I ate a lot of raw salmon (sashimi sushi) and I really think that got my brain and body on a renewal journey.

How long have you been clean, and how have you managed to stay off drugs?

I'm about six and half years clean now and I just don't use drugs on a daily basis and that seems to work for me. I also still attend 12-step support group meetings and try to help other addicts, which always is a good thing, to remind oneself about the hell of addiction and how hard, in fact, it is to give up. We have a saying: "You can only keep what you have by giving it away." I really believe in that - it's like a pay it forward or pay it back system.

To what extent did counselling and therapy aid your recovery?

As I said, I didn't go the conventional rehab route, but over the past six years have gone to different types of therapy and have done a lot of healing, and I believe there is still much to do. I really also believe in the power of the physical and exercise and do a lot of activities like gym and swimming to stimulate my body's "happy feel good" chemicals.

How did your addiction and dysfunction play out within your family?

I think I caused a lot of pain to my family. They got to a point where I think it was almost too painful to love me because I was hurting myself and them so much.

How does one rekindle love and trust within a family which has experienced the destructive behaviour of a drug addict, the resulting pain and betrayal?

The only thing to do is to get clean and begin a personal journey of recovery. All the sorrys can come later. In the book I write about an impulse of wanting to say sorry to everyone really quickly. Of course that type of impulse seldom works because you have to be able to see actual change in a person before you believe that their apologies are real. In Disgrace by JM Coetzee his one character says: "It's fine to say sorry but what are you going to do about it?" That speaks volumes to me.

Will you explain the process of "intervention" and why it works? What advice would you give to families of addicts?

I don't really want to get into this ... it's dangerous territory for me to give advice on this level to anyone. I would simply say seek professional help from people who are well educated in addiction.

Melinda, you have written a gripping and exceptionally courageous book. When did you realise you were going to write Smacked, and how long did it take to write?

I always wanted to write a book about my life as an addict, even when I was in addiction. In fact, I would often wake up, nose running and withdrawing, and bash away at the computer trying to make sense of the terrible darkness and enslavement I was experiencing. Then when I got clean I started to write magazine articles about my experiences and drug issues in general. I wrote one particular piece called "Five years out of Hell" for True Love and Michelle Matthews from Struik by chance read it and in January 2005 called me and asked me if I was interested in writing a book on my experiences. I jumped at the opportunity. It was amazing that I did not have to do one thing to get published, it all simply fell into my lap. Also, my mom had passed away from cancer the month before and with her passing it felt like I was suddenly free to get honest without being scared of hurting her feelings.

In the Afterword you've written: "There are many days when I have sat and wondered what the hell I am doing this for, dredging up the sludge, the mud, the numbing gore of it all …" What was the greatest challenge you faced writing the book?

Not worrying about who I was going to hurt. I chose to be really honest in the writing and sometimes I would think, "Oh my god how can I say that?" But I had to get very single-minded and just trust that the bigger picture was more important than the personal.

When you were writing Smacked, did you worry at all about self-censorship, repressing memories, toning your writing down to meet people's expectations?

Well, as I said in the previous answer, yes I did, but I didn't waste too much time doing that because I had made a decision to do it and the book got bigger than my fears to do it.

What has writing this book taught you?

That the truth will set you free. That pain is sometimes a necessary hurdle to encounter in order to gain freedom. That discipline and hard work will bring results, and finally, if I can change and get better, anyone can!

Are you happy with the reviews and public response you've received so far?

I am so, so happy with the amazing response I have got with my book. Strangers come up to me, I get emails from people and they are all grateful and complimentary about the book. It's about to go in for a reprint, as it's been selling really well. I think the book's popularity is growing and people who read it seem to tell others to read it, and so the word-of-mouth machine is well-oiled right now.

What can we look forward to next? Are you working on something?

I have just been commissioned to write the screenplay of Smacked, so that's really, really great and I have another book in mind that will be a lot funnier! Probably about obsession or something along those lines.

Tell me about the best part of your job as senior feature writer for True Love magazine.

I have a really great job. I love coming into the office and sitting in front of my PC and just writing and researching and telling other people's stories. It's been very good for me to have structure and purpose. I don't like having too much time on my hands and having this job to come to is great for my recovery and my soul. I work with very special people and meet amazing people every time I write a new story. It keeps me on my toes as a writer, having to deliver pieces on deadline etc.

Would you name three books that have made a difference to your life and say why they have been important to you?

Well, I have become a huge Michel Houellebecq fan. His book Platform, and his latest, The Possibility of an Island - both of those books have spoken volumes to me. He's a very cynical and astute voice in literature at the moment and I just learn so much by seeing the world through his eyes. I want to write like him! TS Eliot's The Wasteland has had a huge influence in my life; his way of making images work really just touches me in a deep and profound way.

What are you reading at the moment?

Nothing. I have put all books down so that I can write the screenplay. When I write I tend to ignore other people's work. I find it easier to focus.

What do you think of A Million Little Pieces, James Frey's best-selling "memoir" about drug addiction and rehab? Do you think the furore surrounding the admission that he embellished and falsified events in the book is warranted?

Oh my word! I think James Frey is laughing all the way to the bank with all this hoo-ha. I read the book straight after I'd finished writing mine and I must say I enjoyed it. I think people have gone too far criticising him, but I also think he handled it in quite a silly way. I saw an interview with him on Larry King Live and he was all blocked up and uncommunicative and I didn't actually get a sense that he was in admission of any wrongdoing. Anyway, I suppose all this debate is only making him sell more and the overriding message of the book is an important one: that it's possible to get clean and change.

Do you feel you've reached a confident place within yourself, Melinda?

My life goes in and out of good times and wonderfully easy times. Some days I am happy and other days I'm sad. Of course I am much more confident than I have ever been in my life before now. My life is beginning to really resemble the life I believe I was born to lead … I am building up inner resources and my outside life in the material world is looking better and better than it's ever looked before.

How do you deal with pressure and stress in your life?

I try and distinguish between things I can change and things I can't. The serenity prayer helps me a lot: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." There are many times, however, when I try and control the outcome of things and I land up in lots and lots of trouble. So, I guess life is a real learning curve and I just try and get better in as many ways as I can.

I don't smoke anymore - that used to be a real imaginary crutch, and sometimes sitting with feelings and confusion can be really hard. But bad things always pass and there is always something on the other side.

What are you passionate about? What moves you, what inspires you, what brings you joy?

I am passionate about life in general. I am passionate about writing and seeing beautiful things and experiencing things that I have never done, going to places I have never seen and doing things like swimming with dolphins or watching my two beautiful sons growing and playing and expressing their ideas.

What will you tell your two boys about your past when they're older?

I have already told them about the drugs and how their father and I once used them and how we got clean. I have dedicated the book to them and one day I hope they will read it and it will make sense to them and they will know the mistakes their parents made and they will learn from them. I hope they will also see how we changed things and how we all have the ability to change our lives. I know my book is harsh, but I do hope that with guidance they will realise the important lessons in the book.

Do you have a life philosophy?

I believe we have many opportunities to change. I believe that our thoughts manifest our lives and I believe we can only keep what we have by giving it away. I also believe that we need to share what we have with other people who are suffering.

What is your dream for yourself?

To be happy, kind, functional, creative, generous, successful and forever learning and exploring the wonderful gift of life.

Smacked by Melinda Ferguson (ISBN 1-77007-048-6) is published by Oshun Books and can be purchased from all good bookstores.


LitNet: 14 March 2006

Have your say! To comment on this interview write to webvoet@litnet.co.za, and become a part of our interactive opinion page.

Click here and subscribe to our fantastic free newsletter - for your weekly cultural fix! Click here to see the latest edition

to the top

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.