Mon, Feb 16, 2009 page2

• FEATURE: ‘Veteran’ drug addict brings salvation

  WONDERFUL WORLD After years of struggle, a 32-year-old man found religion and turned his life around by providing advice and support to people in need

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  Su Kai-nung (蘇楷儂) visits drug detoxification centers regularly to share his experience in kicking the habit. He frequents hospitals to cheer up cancer patients by soloing on the saxophone and serves as a division chief at a foundation established to promote the welfare and wellbeing of the physically and mentally challenged.

  Su — a “veteran” drug addict suffering from late-stage lung cancer — works like a dervish every day, but is happy. Really happy.

  Su was selected among 600 candidates nationwide as one of the six individuals who will receive on Saturday the prestigious Chou Ta-Kuan Award of Hope for his courage in facing life’s challenges and his determination to help others.

  

  Su Kai-nung plays saxophone at Penghu jail on Sept. 25. Su will receive a medal from the Chou Ta-kuan Foundation in recognition of his efforts on Feb. 21.

  PHOTO: CHOU TA-KUAN, CNA

  Viewing the young man playing What a Wonderful World on saxophone, one can hardly imagine that the 32-year-old spent most of his life in jail, depriving him of a normal education, and that, having nearly burnt himself out from drugs, he faces his deteriorating condition alone.

  Mocking his involvement in illicit narcotics during the “dark days,” Su said during a visit to a drug abuse treatment center that he could just as easily have been awarded a master’s degree in drug abuse. Yet, he said the inner struggle is an even tougher battle than kicking the drug habit.

  “If you think you can’t do it, you won’t,” he said.

  Encouraging other addicts to believe they can combat their addiction, he urged them to accept help from others.

  “You must accept others’ help. You can’t do it alone,” he said.

  Su said he spent much of his childhood in a state of fear, dread or high anxiety. After his parents divorced, he lived with his grandmother, who was his only relative during his formative years.

  He remembered always being the troublemaker in the eyes of his teachers in junior high school, from which he failed to graduate.

  He was in jail for the first time on charges of using and possessing illicit narcotics at the age of 13. Since then, he split his time between prisons and hospitals, as he was not only a drug abuser but was also involved in street violence.

  At the beginning, he said, the drugs would really calm him down, make him feel carefree and forget who he was and what he should do. Later, his addiction increased to a point where he could no longer live without drugs.

  A few years later, he lost both his health and his long-term girlfriend.

  Su said that his grandmother, who died a few years ago, was his first savior, adding that despite his leading a troubled life, his grandmother, a devout Christian, never abandoned him.

  He said kicking the habit was hard, but not impossible. He recalled that his grandmother tried numerous times to use religion to save him, but in vain — until he attended a sermon in Taipei by an African American Evangelical minister from a church in New York. Toward the end of the service, he went to the front to receive prayer by the minister, asking to be led out of the darkness.

  At that juncture, he said, he felt so clean inside and so happy that he was on his knees crying like a baby. For the first time, he met God and knew he was “saved,” he said.

  From that day on, Su cut all his links with the drug world and stopped smoking, relying on God to find his strength.

  Su has been clean for six years, working selflessly as a missionary of God, visiting correction centers to meet inmates and hospitals to console patients, as well as working as a volunteer for several organizations for the disabled.
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