Looking for joy in a world gone mad
Melinda Ferguson is a journalist and author of bestselling memoirs Smacked, Hooked and Crashed. She is also a mother to two sons, a petrolhead, publisher and a recovering addict who lives in the Plattekloof, Welgemoed area with her partner and a rescue dog called Joe – who features on the cover of her fourth memoir, Bamboozled: looking for joy in a world gone mad.
Ferguson started drinking when she was nine years old. At 15 she started smoking dagga and by the age of 23 she was a heroin and crack addict.
She says she could blame it on a lot of things, like her father dying when she was four and her mother drinking heavily after his death but ultimately she started using alcohol and drugs because she had a hole in her soul. She says it was a kind of spiritual thirst and the hole just got bigger and bigger the more she used. At the book launch at Cavendish Exclusive Books on Wednesday September 7, she said she finally got clean in 1999.
The story unfolds in a heavenly place she has bought in the middle of nowhere. She soon lands up in hell when a woman is brutally murdered in the neighbouring private nature reserve. This causes Ferguson to ask herself what is joy, what is freedom, what do these words mean. This sends her on a journey back to deal with the physical impact and anxiety of her addiction and to writing what she says is her final book on this topic.
At the launch, she spoke often about psilocybin, a hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms that grow in Europe, South America, Mexico, and America. When used in a healing environment, there’s a lot of psychedelic healing, according to Ferguson. She started writing the book in 2017 but her fear of judgement made her cautious about continuing to write it. During the pandemic she took courage and continued.
During this time she also took up the cudgels for the rights of nicotine addicts becoming the Joan of Arc of tobacco after being approached by British American Tobacco South Africa, to fight for the right of smokers and tobacco farmers to allow autonomy over their bodies and freedom to do so in their own homes.
In conversation with Ferguson, radio talk show host and author Sarah-Jayne Makwala King, said Ferguson had meticulously researched the topic of addiction and the 12-step programme for alcoholics and addicts.
Ferguson said this book is like “a coming out” from Smacked, in her search for joy and freedom. That now, in her 23rd year in recovery she is more aware of her imperfections and has made peace with family members (even if they have not accepted this) and most importantly, her sons.
Pregnant with her first son, Ferguson and her husband were drugged up, she did not want the baby. Her mother-in-law took him away. “Imagine growing up knowing your mother never wanted you,” she said.
On what she calls “the night of the knives” her oldest son told her he never knew her as a smack user, only as a bad mum. He then listed his grievances. Instead of doing her usual “victim stuff”, she said, she listened as each word was a “gut punch”. He is now using her addiction in his stand-up comedy act while studying in Amsterdam.
Makwala King described the book as “a most rebellious act of self-love”.
