Kintsugi Heroes
Luiz Ferreira · 35 min
After seventeen years of hidden cocaine addiction driven by a secret he could not tell his family, Luiz Ferreira discovered that moving to Australia and finally accepting himself as a gay man was the only treatment that worked.
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Luiz Ferreira spent 17 years hiding a cocaine addiction behind a well-paying job and a respectable life in Rio de Janeiro. No one knew, not his family in Brasília, not his friends who eventually gave up, not his employees. He tried everything conventional medicine offered: different religions, medications, psychiatrists, therapies, yoga. Nothing worked. He would collapse at work, call ambulances, drive his car thinking about crashing it. He kept using anyway.
At 37, his psychiatrist gave up and threatened to contact his parents. Instead of rehab, Luiz booked a flight to Australia. The cost of cocaine there was $300 a gram. More importantly, before he left Brazil, he took his parents for coffee and told them he was gay. A secret he had carried since he was 13. He cried. They said they loved him. He moved to Sydney and never used again.
It took a master's degree in counseling for Luiz to understand why. During a university assignment mapping his family history, he realised his addiction had never been about the drug. It was about the trauma of hiding who he was. Once he accepted himself and stopped hiding, he didn't need cocaine or alcohol or anything else to numb the pain. He woke up at 5am with energy. He was poor as a student but happier than he had ever been running a business. Now he works with people facing addiction, helping them find and heal the trauma underneath. He tells them what he learned the hard way: life sober is so good.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses addiction & recovery, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • SMART Recovery Australia (addiction): smartrecoveryaustralia.com.au • ReachOut: au.reachout.com
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