Blacked out

Madam Lee insisted her health is fine.

But she admitted that years ago, she blacked out after sniffing glue and woke up in a pool of blood from a gash on her head.

In 2007, after sniffing glue, she got so high that she started a fire in the living room. The blaze caused a water pipe overhead to burst, she said.

But Madam Lee laughed it off, saying that she was so confused at the time that she wanted to shampoo her hair under the burst pipe.

But Madam Tan was not amused.

She said: "She's lucky it was a water pipe. What if it had been a gas pipe?"

Madam Lee's drug habit started in 1976, the year she had her first child. She blames Madam Tan's late father for introducing her to heroin.

She was sent to a drug rehabilitation centre for six months that year, she said.

She added that after being clean for the next nine years, she started taking "ice" (methamphetamine) and Subutex.

In 2004, she picked up glue sniffing to cope with the death of a friend from diabetes, she claimed.

She said she stopped taking other drugs because if she was convicted again, she would be considered a LT2 (Long Term Imprisonment 2) case and would be looking at a minimumof seven years' jail.

The maximum penalty for inhalant abuse is a $2,000 fine, six months' jail, or both.

In the last three years, Madam Lee has been sent to an anti-inhalant abuse centre three times. Her longest stay was nine months.

Just this year alone, she has been sentenced to prison twice - three weeks in January and a month in April.

Madam Tan feels the penalty for inhalant abuse should be tougher.

Glue can be as destructive as other drugs on the addict and the family, she said.
After the interview, Madam Lee promised this reporter that she would quit.

But that same night, she was arrested for glue sniffing.

This article was first published in The New Paper.