‘My Past Involvement With Drugs Doesn’t Define Me, But I Don’t Regret Anything I’ve Been Through’
William Agius was thrust into the spotlight last week after telling the story of his battle with drugs and the law on national Television. William was caught trafficking drugs 14 years ago, but admitted himself into rehabilitation and has been clean for a decade since.
He went even further, quitting smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol a few years later, and eventually opened up his own restaurant.
William spoke to Lovin Malta about his journey to where he is today. is time at San Blas Rehabilitation Centre, and his hopes that others will learn from his life.
Living in San Blas
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my recovery and how it all started. It’s all coming back to me, those first few days with Caritas back then.
I always describe it as the best year of my life. From the start, I questioned myself about how long it would be until I got fed up of this place and leave.
One Big Brother – a resident who started the rehabilitation programme before me – from San Blas accompanied me to sit on a bench with him. I remember him asking me with no hesitation; “Who is William?” I smiled and told him “William obviously” – I didn’t know what to say or what he actually meant by that simple question.
Big Brother then turned to me and told me- “Tell me something about yourself, about your character.”
I paused without an answer.
There and then, my journey had begun: the journey of getting to know myself.
I was someone who didn’t know how to say ‘NO!’, I didn’t know what having boundaries and what respecting authority meant. Everything was all new to me, but I was enjoying the ride of discovering myself.
I knew that this was the only way forward, the only road to get away from what I used to be as I knew that going back to being possessed with addiction wasn’t who I wanted to be anymore.
There are only two ways of getting money to sustain a drug habit – steal or sell drugs. I didn’t want to do either one. Going to San Blas was a game changer for me.
Learning to be a leader
Mariella Dimech was our head at the time. I remember hating her. She was always pointing fingers. “You do this and that”, “Go there”, or “Stop right there”. I will never forget the first time she put me in the cleaning department. At that time, that was the worst thing that could happen to me. The idea of grabbing a cloth or washing dishes simply disgusted me.
Trying to manipulate the situation, I asked Mariella what I was going to gain from this experience, and that’s when she said calmly “you can be a leader in anything you do”.
Being so angry I thought to myself “Yeah right leader of cleaning shit!”
I was so angry at her, but little did I know that Mariella had given me a lesson for life.
Throughout rehab, I was put in every department, whether it was cleaning or cooking and more: nobody had a free pass to anything, we had to do everything like everybody else, to help build who we truly are back from scratch.
Nowadays, I admire a lot of people like my parents, my brothers, my girlfriend, friends and mostly those people that do all they can, with the little that they have, people who are positive and believe that everything is possible.
Everything has an equal and opposite reaction and when I opened my own business, my past started to catch up. It is hard enough for someone to get permissions and all that comes with opening a shop, but for me it was twice as hard – or maybe even three times harder.
This is something I knew from the very start and I have had to learn to deal with it, it is something I accepted as a consequence that I’ll have to pay for because of my past.
The struggle was real
It was a struggle to get the license of the shop, struggling with money, struggling with adapting to change, struggling with putting all the effort in to make only a couple of euros, not enough to cover expenses. Waking up in the early hours of the morning starting with coffees and then all the kitchen mayhem to deliver good food to my clients. Some of the daily challenges I had to face gave me a lot of satisfaction at the end of the day.
Throughout the six years of running my shop, every morning a man inspired me – a sweeper. Yes, a sweeper who swept away the dirt of the previous day. This person was always so energetic and happy; I admired his positivity so much. His energy gave me a boost and kick start to my day.
That’s when it hit me – you can truly be a leader in anything that you do, regardless of the title you carry. There is more to a person than just the title of being a ‘sweeper’, ‘an addict’, ‘drug-dealer’,‘lawyer’, ‘teacher’ or ‘a parent’.
There is more to you than just what you have been through. And the past doesn’t define who you are or what you can achieve. I didn’t let the past stop me from reaching my goals. I didn’t let my past break me and I didn’t use my past as an excuse to ruin who I can be. What I did was use my past as a reference to push me further.
Ask yourself what truly makes you happy and do it!
I am William with a past like everyone else. I don’t regret anything I have been through, because without it, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. My passion is travelling. I believe that travelling means freedom, I like to travel for the adventure of it all. There is something super exciting about not knowing what you’re going to discover. Travelling also helps me discover new things like food, I love experimenting with food and most importantly I love to eat it! I enjoy making people laugh and at the same time I am a happy go lucky guy.
I also hate drugs with a passion. Drugs are taken as a means to an escape from reality. I have been clean for the past 10 years and I honestly do not crave any alternate substances. What I’ve learnt throughout my journey is that patience is key and that every feeling we are trying to run away from will eventually go away, especially if we face them.
Having true feelings means being and feeling alive. True feelings last forever whilst feeling numb will only last a few seconds and life is too beautiful to let it slip away for something that is just temporary. Helping other addicts is part of recovering; this is the reason why I decided to share a little bit of my story.
In my opinion laws should be updated. But one thing is for sure, I am not going to be labelled by events that took place 14 years ago. A lot can happen in a day and a lot has changed 14 years on…
Do you think William Agius deserves to go to be imprisoned or forgiven? Let us know in the comments below.
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