By Minka Tiangco A known drug trade hotspot a few years back, Caloocan City has changed and is emerging victorious in the national campaign against illegal drugs.

As the Duterte administration targeted drug traders and street pushers, the city government has made itself busy reforming their victims- the users.

Drug dependents who seek healing are freely given chances to kick the habit and return to normal life. One of them, Ma. Carina Cruz, 29, was given an opportunity to work as an administration staff for a law firm. She graduated from the Community-Assisted Rehabilitation and Research Out-Patient Treatment and Training System (CARROTTS)-Salubong program of the administration of Mayor Oscar Malapitan in 2019. "My life changed because of the program," she said in an interview. "It helped us earn back our self-respect that we lost due to our vice." She and her husband, who also graduated from the same drug rehabilitation program were able to send two of their five children to school. Lawyer Sikini Labastilla, head of the Caloocan Anti-Drug Abuse Office (CADAO), said the city government's drug rehabilitation programs were launched at the height of the bloody war on drugs in 2016. In 2015, Cruz and her husband became drug users. The couple was so addicted with shabu that once they even used the the money for the chemotheraphy session of a sick relative to buy drugs. A year after, police officers knocked on their door to issue a demand for their surrender in 24 hours. Out of fear for their lives, they sought help from the church. Due to the number of people seeking help, particularly those whose names appeared in the police's and barangay's drug watch lists and plea bargainers, the Diocese of Caloocan and CADAO partnered to form the CARROTTS-Salubong program. CARROTTS-Salubong, one of the country's pioneer community-based drug rehabilitation programs, is rooted on the belief that human life is sacred and should be respected. "We are leaning more towards the mental health issue of the problem rather than the addiction aspect of it. Of course, addiction can be considered as a mental health issue," Labastilla said in an interview. The four-month drug rehabilitation program teaches recovering drug addicts to return to their sense of self, reengage with their families or community, and reintegrate in society with new skills. The program integrates various approaches to ensure that each patient's needs are being catered to. In his experience, Labastilla said this method brings better results than just using the same kind of program for everybody. "Instead of providing a cookie-cutter list of rehabilitation activities that are applied uniformly to all program participants, the program takes a 'case management' approach and takes into account each individual client's socio-economic and psychological context and designs a treatment that matches this," the CARROTTS-Salubong manual read. "After an initial screening and intake, each client undergoes a thorough evaluation by a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a social worker, with the goal of establishing their current life status, before providing treatment that is tailor-fit to their specific needs," it added. After going through psychological “baselining” and individual counseling, the patients are grouped into 30-people pods led by a psychometrician or social worker. Paul Infante, 41, volunteered to undergo the CARROTTS-Salubong drug rehabilitation program, thus, ending his 20 years of illegal substance addiction. He secured a job as a warehouse inventory supervisor at a glass company. Not only did he mend a broken relationship with his parents and siblings, he also recently became a father. "I've been clean for two years and 10 months. Back then, I thought there was no hope for me to change and be cured from the sickness of addiction, but it's possible, as long as I remain faithful to God who is always ready to extend help when I am suffering," he said in an interview. Cruz and her husband graduated from the program after six months and found work through the help of CADAO staff. Cruz continued to volunteer at the church to help other recovering addicts. "I want to show them that just because they lost their way, does not mean they can't change," she said. "I want them to hear about my learnings in the program and how it affected me." With the success of the program, Labastilla expressed hope that the stigma surrounding drug users will eventually fade, thus, lead to more people voluntarily admitting themselves in the drug rehabilitation program. "Maybe in the future, when they start to have trust and confidence in the counselling and intervention system, maybe that will be the basis, they will look for the service," he said. Last year, CADAO inaugurated Kanlungan, the country’s first comprehensive rehabilitation complex, that offers residential treatment, reformation under the Balay Silangan program, outpatient services, and a community-based rehab pod. Labastilla said that the CADAO will soon officially launch the CARROTTS-Salubong manual that other local government units can use as a guide to create their own community-based drug rehabilitation programs.