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SINGAPORE \u2013 As former engineering manager Roland (not his real name) stood in a court dock in 2018, he wondered: \u201cHow did I get myself into this situation?\u201d<\/p>\n
On the surface, his life looked picture-perfect: he had a master\u2019s degree from a local university, a successful career with a five-figure salary, and a loving wife and son.<\/p>\n
Yet, in his 40s, Roland was sent to a drug rehabilitation centre (DRC) and later, to prison, because of a methamphetamine addiction.<\/p>\n
Now 53, Roland was candid and articulate in a July interview with The Straits Times at We Care Community Services, where he works as a counsellor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a certain (profile of a) person with addiction. We may know about (addiction), but knowing how to deal with it is another thing,\u201d he mused.<\/p>\n
Stories like his are more common in Singapore today than one might expect. DRC inmates with tertiary education and above have been growing in number over the years<\/span><\/a>, according to official statistics.<\/p>\n There were 293 inmates with qualifications ranging from polytechnic diplomas to doctorates in 2025, compared with 204 in 2021, based on Singapore Prison Service statistics.<\/p>\n Meth did not seem like a problem when Roland first tried it at a party in 2014. It felt like a quick solution to pent-up stress.<\/p>\n After moving from Malaysia to Singapore for his studies when he was seven, he grew up under pressure to work hard and prove himself.<\/p>\n He earned a master\u2019s in engineering and climbed the corporate ladder swiftly. He became a manager at a semiconductor plant and was in charge of more than 200 staff.<\/p>\n But the relentless pressure became unbearable, said Roland, who is now a Singaporean. He recalled how he cut back on sleep and meals just to get work done.<\/p>\n The white crystals of meth promised relief \u2013 especially when his friends, too, were taking the drug.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course I knew how dangerous it was,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I just couldn\u2019t think beyond that. All I could think about was how stressed I was, how I needed to get away for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n Roland said meth initially helped him stay awake at night and think more creatively.<\/p>\n When people remarked that he looked tired during the day, he passed it off as work stress.<\/p>\n The addiction worsened when he quit his job in 2015. Despite sending out about 2,000 applications, he could not land another job. He had been using meth once a fortnight, but now started taking it almost daily.<\/p>\n His wife noticed that he was moody and sleepy, but he claimed he was depressed about being unemployed.<\/p>\n The drug use remained a carefully guarded secret; he had a reputation to uphold and a family to feed. Their son was only eight years old then.<\/p>\n \u201cI always considered myself a problem solver. So trying to manage the drug use was a problem that I needed to solve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That facade did not last long. Roland soon realised he was no match for meth. He became more irritable, and he started hallucinating that people were out to harm him.<\/p>\n In 2017, he surrendered at a police station to protect his family from himself. He was sent to a DRC for three months.<\/p>\n Ironically, he felt freer in the DRC, where he met people just like him.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a certain understanding and relation to each other\u2019s problems. I felt that I wasn\u2019t alone in this journey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was outside, I was a slave to drugs. Everything was upside down.\u201d<\/p>\n After his release, Roland worked as a restaurant waiter, but soon slipped back into using drugs as he did not have sufficient community support.<\/p>\n He surrendered to the police again in 2018. This time, he was sentenced to 5\u00bd months\u2019 jail.<\/p>\n His wife, who works in social services, stuck by him and took care of their finances during his rehabilitation.<\/p>\n When he left prison in 2019, he joined We Care\u2019s counselling programmes and finally stayed clean.<\/p>\n Reflecting on his journey, Roland said education did not prepare him for many of life\u2019s challenges, such as how to handle stressors and rely on the community.<\/p>\n At 47, he pursued a second master\u2019s degree, this time in counselling, and after graduation, joined We Care full-time in 2022 to help other former drug addicts.<\/p>\n \u201cEducated people can be the most defensive when it comes to recovery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201c(They think) \u2018I don\u2019t need help. I just need to plough through.\u2019 And sometimes that will just make them go deeper into the quicksand.\u201d<\/p>\n Knowing how fragile former addicts\u2019 egos can be during recovery, he uses the analogy of driving a car to emphasise their capacity to make choices.<\/p>\n They are the driver while he is their passenger who will warn them \u2013 and step out \u2013 if the car is moving towards a tree. They are free to drive forward. When the car crashes and they turn around, he will be there waiting.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about what you know,\u201d said Roland. \u201cIt\u2019s more about knowing who is around to support you.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 As former engineering manager Roland (not his real name) stood in a court dock in 2018, he wondered: \u201cHow did I get myself…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018I was a slave to drugs\u2019<\/h2>\n
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