I tried twice to kill myself when I went bankrupt – Former BBC reporter

General News of Monday, June 3, 2019

Source: Mynewsgh.com

2019-06-03

Former Ghanaian journalist of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and former drug lord, Paa Joe Odonkor revealed that he had attempted suicide twice because he could not stand to be humiliated by society after losing all its money under drugs.

According to him, he has already driven a car to hit a large tree at Asylum, but he's not dead and at one point he also took 20 pills of Valium (10 mg) but he was woke up earlier than his usual time.

The 75-year-old man said that rich, healthy people, later in life, looked like HIV / AIDS patients because of their addiction to drugs.

The ex-addict recounted that he had sold his properties for millions of cedis because of drugs and that he had become a poor with ragged clothes.

He said he could not afford the luxurious lifestyle he lived through in his 26 years of snorting cocaine and confined himself to his room.

The once fabulously rich man explained that the people he helped to travel, including women, despised him whenever he was trying to get closer to them.

Paa Joe Odonkor said that people only claimed to love him because of his money but disappeared when he had gone bankrupt.

According to him, not only society has despised but also the Church said that the worst that can happen to anyone, is when he is addicted to drugs.

In an interview with SVTV watched by MyNewsGh.com, he recounted: "I wanted to be fabulously rich and I got it but at the end of the day you became so humiliated that you want to kill yourself. I tried to kill myself twice, it did not work … I took Valium 20 and it did not work that day, I woke up earlier than I did. I used to go to church and I was humiliated when you became addicted to drugs and you did not manage it well and as you get older, you look like an HIV patient / AIDS: You become a slave to drugs, people will despise you, your family will be humiliated, drugs will drive you crazy.

He said that even when he stopped snorting cocaine, people still scorned him and spoke negatively about him, adding that he still had suicidal tendencies.

"The kind of things they'll say about you when you hear you say you want to take your life, but at the end of the day, I thank God, I'm alive, I still have these suicidal tendencies," was -he explains.

Paa Donkor advised young people not to use drugs, it would only make them miserable in the future.

"Let no one fool you about drugs, I can testify, because I have been an addict for 26 years," he advised.

He called on society not to neglect drug addicts.