Bernice Osei, a 46-year-old mother of two has recounted her struggle with drug abuse and the rippling effect it has had on her family.
The 46-year-old left her husband, also a former drug addict because he insisted she stopped abusing drugs.
According to her, the struggle with drug abuse has had a great impact on her life and the relationship she had with her family.
Bernice in an interview with Crime Check Foundation (crimecheckghana) said, she was lured into smoking by friends when she fled home (Takoradi) to Accra.
“I was born and bred in Takoradi but I left home to Accra to hustle and that was where I was introduced to weed smoking by friends at the Konkomba market” she said.
Narrating her story, she said, she met her husband at a ghetto one day as she went there to smoke.
“We got married few years after and we had two children, I married him particularly because I was happy I had met someone who had the same habit as me” she noted
According to her, things got worse in life and so her family travelled in and out of Ivory Coast looking for greener pasture, there at Ivory Coast she was introduced to Cocaine.
“My husband left Ghana to Ivory Coast first then later I joined him and there I noticed he had started sniffing Cocaine, so one day I tried it and that was it, I got hooked up to it” she recounted.
The grip of addiction became immense on Bernice has her husband who started sniffing cocaine managed to stop after a short ailments but Bernice could not and that was the genesis of issues in her marriage.
“We left Ivory Coast to Ghana when my husband contracted Tuberculosis, here in Ghana, I continued smoking although my husband and my family didn’t want me to” adding that, I later engaged in robbery because I needed money to buy the drugs but unfortunately for me through an operation by the Narcotics Control Board I was apprehended at a ghetto in Amanfrom a suburb of Takoradi” she said.
The remorseful Bernice opened up about the health hazards abusing drugs has exposed her to, she advised the general public to desist from abusing drugs as it can be very addictive.
“I do not wish any of my kids or a family member or even anybody should ever go through the kind of addiction I have been through, it is not a good thing” she opined.
Bernice is serving a 10-year prison sentence at the Sekondi Central Prison.
