From the heartland of Sikhism comes an inspiring story of a former army colonel helping to free his countrymen from addiction through positive reinforcement.
Colonel Dr. Rajinder Singh is the founder and director of the Akal Drug De-Addiction Center in Punjab. His methods have helped over 10,000 patients kick addictions stemming from a variety of underlying causes.
Dr. Singh is 91, but you wouldn’t know it—he works all the time to improve the center, and plans to open a third location are moving right along.
His method is contingent on transformation born from compassion and steady reinforcement.
According to The Better India, Dr. Singh was among the earliest doctored psychiatrists in independent India, but it was his time in the army, fighting in the 1962 Indo-China War, that helped him understand the psyche behind addictions.
“Army personnel are exposed to highly stressful situations. Long periods away from home can affect their mental health. Some even experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after combat and war,” Singh said.
At the Akpal Center in Punjab’s Sangrur district, Singh has seen all kinds of addiction, from intravenous drug use to addiction to the fumes of whitener. He even admitted a man who was addicted to the adrenaline shock from snake bites.
In every case, his method is the same: physical exercise, organized sports, yoga, medical treatment if needed, and introducing the concept of service inherent in his Sikh faith without any room for “haranguing or preachiness.”
Dr. Singh believes that the root cause of addictions lies in certain experiences that the person has battled, and that an eventual moral reckoning, either with themselves or with those who have harmed them, is the end goal of the rehabilitation.
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Remembering one patient admitted for injecting a mixture of substances that caused two separate marriages to fail, a mixture of medication, individual and group counseling, and spiritual healing helped him through withdrawal.
“His withdrawal symptoms subsided, he gained six kilograms, his sleep and appetite improved, and his mood became cheerful. He was discharged with advice for regular follow-ups,” Singh notes. Today, the former patient works in a factory, is happily married, and has referred over 60 addicts from his area to this center.
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The Sikhs believe that to be born as a human is a result of first being born as every single other animal on Earth once, and therefore that life is to be cherished and the fruits derived from it to be shared.
It’s a fine starting point for any attitude towards healing addiction in society: that the lives of addicts not only matter but are beautiful and endowed with purpose.
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