Echoes of Trauma: The escape we don’t see –
Some people are not looking for pleasure. They are looking for a way to make the pain stop.
By Lillian Okenwa
We see the bottle, the powder, the pills, the gambling account, the hours disappearing into a phone. We see the escape. We may never see what drove someone to it.
The escape is visible. The pain that produced it often isn’t.
Not everyone who reaches for a substance is looking for a high. Some want sleep. Others want a few hours without the thoughts that will not stop racing. Some are searching for courage. Others want to forget. There are people who have simply become desperate for a few moments in which life feels different from what it has become.
And some are trying to get away from themselves. What happened before the escape began?
There may have been a death, a divorce, an abusive home, a business that collapsed, a job that never came, years of rejection, a childhood nobody talks about or a relationship that left wounds no one could see.
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There may not have been one dramatic event. Life may simply have delivered too many disappointments, one after another, until a person began searching for somewhere to put the pain.
Nigeria is confronting its drug problem with increasing urgency. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) continues to pursue trafficking networks, seize illicit substances and arrest suspected dealers and kingpins. The Federal Government has also reaffirmed its commitment to prevention, enforcement, treatment and rehabilitation.
The work is necessary.
Those who make money from another person’s vulnerability must be pursued. Networks supplying dangerous substances must be disrupted. Children and young people must be protected from those who deliberately put drugs within their reach.
Yet there is another person in this picture.
The person buying.
The person hurting.
The person who has reached a point where temporary relief looks easier to bear than another ordinary day.
What happens when we remove the escape but leave the pain?
A dealer and a person struggling with dependence cannot be placed in the same box. The dealer exploiting another person’s vulnerability deserves accountability. The young person taking drugs to cope with an unbearable home may need treatment, counselling, safety, family support and a way back into ordinary life.
One is a criminal-justice question. The other is a health question.
And sometimes, it is a trauma question.
We have become more comfortable talking about mental health, yet many people still do not know what to do when someone is actually struggling.
We tell people to be strong. We tell them to pray. We tell them to think positively. We tell them other people have it worse. We tell them to stop worrying. We tell them to move on.
Most of the time, we mean well.
Yet a person drowning does not need another speech about the importance of swimming. They need somebody to notice that they are drowning.
Depression does not always arrive with tears. It can look like irritability, excessive sleeping or sleeplessness. It can hide behind relentless work, gambling, drinking, endless hours online or the repeated use of something that promises temporary relief.
None of these behaviours automatically means that someone is depressed or traumatised. Depression does not inevitably lead to substance use. Psychological distress and substance-use problems can, however, overlap, and both require proper care rather than shame or dismissal.
None of this removes personal responsibility. Choices have consequences. Families suffer. Children suffer. Communities suffer. Lives are lost.
When everyone who is struggling is labelled bad, irresponsible or simply undisciplined, however, we may drive the person further underground and miss the pain underneath the behaviour. A young person using drugs may need accountability, but he may also need treatment, counselling, safety and someone willing to understand what brought him there. Telling him simply to stop may remove the coping mechanism without touching the wound underneath it.
Think of the young person who comes home from school and finds his parents fighting every night.
The graduate who has been looking for work for three years.
The widow trying to raise children alone.
The man whose business collapsed and who cannot bring himself to tell his friends that he has run out of money.
The woman who has spent years in a marriage that has slowly destroyed her confidence.
The teenager being bullied who has stopped telling anyone.
The person who lost someone and never had the opportunity to grieve.
The person who looks successful from the outside and feels like a failure every time the door closes behind them.
What do we offer such people before they reach for something that promises relief?
Prevention has to mean more than telling people that drugs are dangerous.
Of course they are.
We also need places where people can talk before they break. Schools where troubled children are noticed. Families where admitting that you are struggling does not attract ridicule. Workplaces where psychological distress is not treated as weakness. Communities where people know where to seek help. Healthcare systems where mental-health care is not reserved for those who can afford it.
We need friendships in which someone can say, “I don’t think you are okay,” and stay long enough to hear the answer.
Nigeria has made efforts to strengthen its mental-health response, including integrating mental-health services into broader public-health programmes and giving greater attention to young people. The question is how quickly and how widely those efforts reach the person sitting alone in a room at 2 a.m., wondering how to survive the next day.
That person may never attend a conference. They may never walk into a government office. They may never tell anyone, “I am depressed.” They may simply begin looking for an escape.
And the escape may be much easier to find than help.
We often notice addiction after it has become visible: when the child begins failing, the employee stops showing up, money disappears, a marriage starts collapsing, the police arrive or the hospital becomes involved.
By then, the story may have started years earlier.
There may have been a moment when someone was hurting and nobody noticed. A season when help was needed but asking felt impossible. A child who learnt early that nobody wanted to hear about his pain. An adult who became so accustomed to carrying everything alone that seeking help began to feel like failure.
By the time the escape becomes visible, the pain may have been there for years.
The fight against drugs therefore has to extend beyond the supply chain. Enforcement remains essential. So are prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration. Just as important is learning to see people before they become cases.
Help has to be accessible, affordable and trusted enough for people to reach it before desperation pushes them somewhere else.
A person we call difficult may be grieving. Someone we call lazy may be depressed. The one we dismiss as irresponsible may be overwhelmed. A troublesome teenager may be carrying something he has never learnt how to name.
We cannot assume this about everyone. We can, however, become curious before becoming judgmental. Instead of asking only: Why would anyone do this to themselves? Perhaps we should also ask: What happened that made this feel like the best escape available?
There is no simple answer. Human beings are complicated. Pain is complicated. Addiction is complicated. Depression is complicated. A society cannot arrest its way out of human pain. It can disrupt the supply, prosecute traffickers, seize drugs and dismantle criminal networks. All of that is necessary.
Somewhere, another person will still wake up tomorrow carrying a pain they do not know how to carry. If there is nowhere to take that pain, something else may eventually offer to carry it for them.
Not everything that offers relief is a friend.
Some things only postpone the pain while making the eventual cost heavier. The work, then, is not merely to make escape harder. It is to make help easier to find. To make conversation safer. To make treatment less shameful. To make mental-health care more accessible. To teach our children that asking for help is not weakness.
And to remember that the person who appears to be falling apart may have spent a very long time holding themselves together.
The escape is visible. The pain that produced it often isn’t.
Somewhere between the two is a person we may still have time to reach. Before the escape becomes an addiction. Before the addiction consumes a life. Before the life becomes a statistic. Perhaps we should look again and ask: What are you trying to escape from?
That may be where the real conversation begins.
- A lawyer and equity advocate, Lillian is the publisher of Law & Society Magazine. She can be reached at Lillianokenwa@gmail.com. X: @OkenwaLillian.
