Melinda Ferguson has been to hell and back. It is a journey she embarked on, then abandoned for the sake of her children.

Anarchic Spirit

Melinda was born in Ermelo in Mpumalanga and when she was six months old her family, including muso sister Jennifer, moved to Johannesburg. There was alcoholism in the family and an undercurrent of abuse.

But all-in-all it was a safe, stifling house ruled by an overbearing mother. Melinda was having none of it and began rebelling at school – drinking and immersing herself in the crazy, anarchic German punk music of Nina Hagen.

Drama Queen

To her mother, Melinda was a drama queen. This became a self-fulfilling prophesy when she enrolled for a drama degree at the University of Cape Town and performed at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Here she became even more anti-establishment and spent much of her time ‘loaded’.

After graduating she worked for a while before meeting her future husband, and together they started a production company and a family with two sons. But that would be laid to ruin when they discovered heroin.

Smacked

‘I have a gun in my mouth,’ is how she opens Smacked, her account of her dark, six-year journey into hell and her daily battle to find freedom once more.

These words open a door to the harrowing world of drugs from which most people are far removed. The door is not opened, it is wrenched open and as a reader you are sent scuttling into a space where terror, fear and the seediness of drugs reside.

Heroin Addiction

Her addiction to heroin left her beaten, raped, penniless and ravaged emotionally, mentally and spiritually. There were no holds barred for this normal girl who leaves a world she has always known to enter into a planet on our doorstep that is mired in darkness.

Ferguson makes no bones of the extent of her addiction, detailing her journey into hell where she confronted pimps, druglords, ‘whores’, her own familial relationships, her incandescent childhood and her role as a woman, wife and mother.

The Human Face

In this world she had to confront her whims and inadequacies. She was left moaning at the door of her lover and supplier, Goodluck, who refused to do anything more for her.

And she was filled with helpless rage when she learnt her children had been taken from her.

Fighting the Demon

It was time to start fighting the demon; at first unwillingly. Tracked down by her brother and sister in Hillbrow, she was taken to a farm for homeless people outside Johannesburg. This was not rehab, but a place for those who had hit rock bottom.

She was soon kicked off after smoking dagga, but allowed back after pleading for mercy. There she began to reorder her life and has been clean since 1999. She has not even had a cigarette in that time, ‘though I do miss the occasional glass of wine.’

Writer’s Life

Since then Melinda has written two books, Smacked and Hooked, both published by Penguin Books, and had a major documentary filmed of her life. She is now the features editor at True Love and has been in a stable relationship for six years.

She is a model mom and, with her ex, raises her sons in an open environment. She has no secrets from them.

‘Writing and parenting is ritualistic, very much like taking drugs,’ she says. ‘But there is a mundanety to taking drugs in that it is a world consumed by sameness. Writing and parenting, however, are constantly changing, evolving, and I’m hooked on that.’  

Melinda reminds us that we all do the best we can, all the time, and when we know better we do better. She is an inspiration to everyone.