Like may other women in my situation it is hard for me to talk about this, but I strongly believe that sharing is part of healing, which is why I chose not to be silent.

In Indonesia, drug use is heavily criminalized. Society doesn’t have good and balanced information about drugs. The only information people have about drugs is that they are illegal. Drugs scare society, and scared people feel the need for bold action and strong laws to guard themselves against a threat. Unfortunately this means that society, including the government, hasn’t been able to really understand drugs and how they work. Sometimes people will say that the law is perfectly fine, but I believe there are challenges.

For example, there are no comprehensive educational programs to educate young people about drugs or sexual and reproductive health. When I was growing up, I was told by my parents and the local media that: “If you take drugs, you will die!”.

But then I saw that some of my friends were taking drugs, and they didn’t die, but rather enjoyed the experience. This was very confusing for me as it made me question the information I was given in the first place. Because I didn’t have comprehensive information it was hard for me to find good information to satisfy my questions about drugs. Whenever I tried to find information online, most search results would refer me to sources and movies that told me the exact opposite of what I heard from my parents and the newspapers. These sources led me to believe that taking drugs gives you energy and makes you have a good time.

There were no educational programs that provided detailed information about drugs, their impact and which long-term effects they would have on my body and life. To me, drugs were just a big mystery, particularly as I felt that my parents and the newspapers were lying.

How should young teenagers make informed decisions when we are given misinformation and not enough education to deal with these issues when we grow up? Although it is illegal, the reality is that drugs are a big business in most countries, and I feel that drug dealers use the lack of comprehensive education and conflicting information to their advantage to get more customers. Being a young person, the chances are high that you will come into contact with somebody who either takes or offers drugs to you. Not being fully prepared for this situation and being as confused as I was means that young people are not empowered. You are weak and dealers know how to use this powerlessness to their advantage.

I believe this was part of the reason why I started using drugs. Seeing as I didn’t have a reliable source of information I turned to a group of people who knew about it because they were either taking or selling it.

The first time I was exposed to illegal drugs was when I was 14. My friends offered a “cigarette” to me, which turned out to be Marijuana. At this point I wasn’t aware that I was about to take a drug.

At the age of 19 I became part of a circle of friends who injected drugs. I started injecting heroin myself. At that time, some of my previous friends chose to avoid my company.

Eventually my parents found out that I was using drugs. My mum almost cried for an entire year and my father developed problems with his blood pressure. My relationship with my parents became really complicated.

That was about the time when I left home and dropped out of university. As a young person using drugs, you don’t have much of a support network. Even at university they have medical tests and a policy to expel students who are shown to use drugs. I know that using drugs is illegal, but pushing them to the fringe of society whilst removing any kind of support can’t be the solution. I believe people who have fallen victim to a drug habit, should be supported with services rather than prosecuted.

When I used drugs, I myself didn’t know where to turn to for support. At the time, there were no services, my relationship with my parents was really difficult, and my social circles were largely limited to a group of friends who were also using drugs. Because drug use is so heavily criminalized, there were no services I could access. If you get arrested, you could pay your way to a private rehabilitation center, but most of the time, People Who Use Drugs are simply sent to jail if they happen to be poor.

At that time drug use in Indonesia was really high. The government did provide any harm reduction services, such as needle exchange programs or oral replacement therapy, where they introduce less harmful drugs that the user can take orally in place of injecting heroin. The driving principle behind Oral Replacement Therapy is that an opiate addict will be able to regain a normal life and schedule while being treated with a substance that stops him or her from experiencing withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings, but doesn't provide strong euphoria or puts them at risk of HIV infection. However these services weren’t youth friendly.

More importantly though, my concern is that young people are unable access these services because they are not youth-friendly. They are often too expensive for young people to access, may require parental consent or require the person to be of age or married. If you look at my case you can understand that in reality neither of these options are likely to apply to a young drug user.

This puts young people at high risk of HIV infection, especially because many haven’t been made aware of the risks associated with drug use. As a matter of fact the majority of new HIV cases were found amongst People Who Use Drugs (PWD) at the time.

In Indonesia, the HIV epidemic is a concentrated epidemic. At first it was driven by People who Injected Drugs, but this changed in 2008/ 2009, when the government finally introduced harm reduction services by making needle exchanges and oral replacement therapy available.

But there are still challenges. For example: What about the partners of drug users? They are also at a high risk of contracting the virus from their partner. How do we ensure that they remain safe in terms of HIV infection? As I mentioned before, there is little to no education or information about sexual and reproductive health. If someone has unprotected sex with a positive drug-using partner, there is a chance they may contract HIV themselves. Remember, even if the sex is consensual (which is not always the case) you can’t tell by looking at someone whether they are HIV positive or not.

In my case, I learned so much about People Living with HIV, because I had a chance to work with them. When I accessed a needle exchange program in 2009 the organization providing the service asked me to be an outreach worker and peer educator for people living with HIV.

Because I couldn’t rely on family support, I needed a job and accepted the role. I really tried hard to do my best, but the organization had a policy that required me to stay clean whilst working as an outreach worker. Dealing with my addiction and the rules of the foundation was really hard. I had even tried to use Buphrenoprine, one of the replacement drugs they use for replacement therapy. But that didn’t work because I kept injecting it.

With opioid replacement therapy, you are supposed to take pills instead of injecting the drugs. But I wasn’t using it that way. My friends and I made the pills into a powder, dissolved it in water and injected it. There was little oversight from the practicing medical professional at that time.

Eventually I had to stop working as an outreach worker and things got worse from there.

Particularly for young women, being a drug user does not only bear health risks. The power dynamics surrounding you, particularly the power dynamics with your partner, can be harmful. At the time, I had a drug-using boyfriend. The addiction was one thing, but the power relations with him was another. I won’t go into detail, but he didn’t treat me well. Needless to say that I suffered a lot from the disparity in power. The harmful effects of using drugs unraveled.

I was tired; communication with my parents was almost non-existent for approximately 5 years, I had dropped out of university and most of my friends were gone.

This was when my journey of empowerment began.

I realized that I would lose all of my family if I continued on this path. So I decided to change.

I started from the very beginning: I left my abusive ex-boyfriend and moved to another city. I focused on avoiding drug dealers and started actively searching for good information online. This wasn’t the kind of information I had accessed when I was younger, but scientific articles and websites that helped me understand the substances I used and the affects they had on my body.

I found a new group of friends who weren’t using drugs. In fact, many of these friends had previously used drugs but were clean now. This was a great source of strength to me. They supported my and helped me to deal with my addiction. In this group I felt looked after. Like a baby that learned to walk again I learned how to build trust again.

I found a new job and realized that I can work as a professional. Once again, I started working for an organization that provides support for people living with HIV. This job gave me purpose and motivated me to look after myself and others.

I also found a new boyfriend who had also stopped using drugs. He is now my husband and I am so grateful for the support I received from him when I learned how to deal with my addiction.

Finally, in December 2009, I quit heroin and stopped using drugs altogether in late 2010.

My relationship with my parents gradually improved. However, it took them another year to start trusting me again. When they saw that I was working and didn’t ask them for money they realized that I could be independent.

Today, my relationship with my parents is really wonderful. It is just like the time before my journey began in 2005. I built a new life for myself and continued my work with People Living with HIV. I am working with HIV positive women in Indonesia. It really motivates me to work in this area because I know that there are so many people who don’t have money to pay for the services.

Through my work I learned so much about drugs, human rights and violence against women. Because of that information I believe that I have also grown stronger. So many young people don’t have access to information like I have. I believe the most important part of my journey was the empowerment I was lucky to develop.

In the organization I work for now, we have the ability to share information about services, including which kind of services our peers should access. We have a mentoring program where we bring women together to transfer knowledge to them. I am proud to be an advocate now and I help them to develop knowledge about the rights and the services they should have access to.

Having experienced how drug use and what the lack of suitable services for young people can do to your life, I realized that I should be open to share. I like working as an advocate because the people I am working with come from similar backgrounds and by helping each other we can build our strengths and capacity to respond to our problems more efficiently.

Until last year, we weren’t able to provide these services to younger people. That’s how I started to work with YouthLEAD. We have 5 focal points here whose task it is to reach out to Young Key Populations at high risk of HIV exposure, such as young drug users, young sex workers, young men who have sex with other men and young transgender persons. It is my task to coordinate our efforts here in Indonesia and provide technical assistance to the other focal points.

With regards to what YouthLEAD does in Indonesia, I believe one of the powerful services they are providing is to help other young people to be empowered and develop leadership skills of their own. I have attended many leadership seminars and the amazing thing is that it allows me to really understand the methodology as to how it can transform a shy young person into a strong advocate who can look after themselves and others. When we held one of these so called NewGen workshops in Jakarta you could really see how the girls who attended this session became more comfortable and confident to share their experiences and stories during the training.

The best thing is that we also invited young Men who have Sex with Men to the training. In a safe forum like this the Key Populations at High Risk of HIV Exposure get to realize that they come from a similar backgrounds and have the same problems on which they can work together.

Based on my personal experience as a drug user, I believe services like these that look at the aspect of drug users being human beings and hope to treat them as members of society that require services and support, particularly in the case of young people wanting to access treatment or health services, is very important.

I argue this point wherever I can. For example, I had the opportunity to attend the world’s biggest international AIDS conference in the US last year where I got to make a case for young women in front of many high level representatives of government and multinational organizations.

I was also invited to have dinner at the White House where I shook hands with Barak Obama. Earlier this year, I also attended the Grammy Awards where I was involved in the launch of a new phone app that provides young people with a map of services that are available nearby. I had the chance to meet a few famous performers and actors and was very grateful for the opportunity. None of this would have happened without having empowered myself.

Ultimately, what I have learned through my journey is that I shouldn’t be afraid to share my story. Sharing is healing. But listening to the person wanting to share is just as important. We must provide sensitive health and harm reduction services to young people, treat them like human beings and establish a society that focuses on helping these victims rather than ostracizing them. To make this happen we need to advocate for change. To young people in similar situations I can say: Speak up, don't be silent.

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Understanding the Issues