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.
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.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS