A FORMER drug addict who once lived in the streets because of his love for Volo, cocaine and codeine has stunned the odds by rewriting his life from heroin dependency to healing and now serving as a certified addiction counselor, helping others escape the same trap that nearly destroyed him.
24 year old Dalitso Phiri’s story doesn’t begin with needles or back alley dealers. It begins in the most innocent way with just a cigarette shared among teenagers.
He told Kalemba in an interview that he was only 13, back in 2014, curious and eager to fit in, when he thought of experimenting and puffing away at what he thought was a regular smoke.
What he didn’t know was that the cigarette he was given by his friends had been laced with heroin.
By age 17 in 2016, the experiment turned into enslavement. Dalitso could not go a day without the fix of what he and his fellow users called “Volo,” street slang for heroin.
Then came codeine, then cocaine. The drugs became his daily bread and his prison.
“I didn’t know I was digging a hole I wouldn’t know how to climb out of,” he said.
School became a blur for him as he experienced repeated suspensions which led to expulsions. Prefects became his enemies, classrooms became strange places and by Grade 10, Dalitso was gone, swallowed into the streets where the only timetable was finding the next high Chibolya junkie.
“I would disappear. My family would search for me. I felt like no one understood me. I thought the streets were the only place I could be myself, so I turned to the streets and disappeared,” he said.
He said he was arrested not once or twice but many times as he lived on the streets.
Opportunities vanished as the once bright boy who dreamt of making something of himself had become a cautionary tale and a ghost on the pavements of Lusaka.
But where the streets broke him, hope found him again in the form of a friend who had recently come out of rehab.
Clean, composed and changed, that friend showed Dalitso what recovery could look like.
In early 2023, Dalitso was picked up into rehab, a place he now calls the beginning of his rebirth.
There, he underwent a soul deep detox, not just of his body, but of his mind and spirit and he now counsels youths whose shoes he once wore.
“My friend looked like peace. And I wanted peace. My family was always looking for me. I just met a friend that recently went to rehab and I got inspired. I really wanted what I saw there. Fortunately enough my friend explained to me how it would go and helped me get into rehab. Sanity House had to pick me up from the streets and helped me recover. I’m on good terms with my family. I now work as a counselor at the rehabilitation centre that changed my life. I also did psycho social counseling and recovery course,” he said.
Today, Dalitso is two and half years sober and has since rewritten his grade 12 exam and just waiting on admission to college.
He shared that he would like to pursue Public Health.
“People think quitting drugs is the end. But it’s not. It’s the beginning of a life filled with purpose, peace, and growth,” he explained.
He urged parents to look beyond surface smiles and be present in their children’s lives.
“Nobody tells you that drugs will make you homeless. Nobody warns you that they will pull you away from the people who love you. But I’m telling that truth now, so someone else doesn’t have to learn it the hard way,” stated Dalitso.
Dalitso further thanked his now workplace for the commendable job they did as he underwent recovery.
By Catherine Pule
Kalemba, May 8, 2025
