Fighting the Inner Demon in أوزبكستان Ozbekistan
Trigger Warning: This article contains discussions of eating disorders, addiction and body image.
The problem with addiction is that after an hour, it loses the pleasure, what satisfies you and gives you a fake feeling of fullness and being complete later turns into a feeling of desolation, incompleteness and emptiness.
I changed so much physically that my mother was forced to take me to her personal trainer.
She then got me a job in her friend’s office, anything ‘out of sight out of mind’ was applied to me. Our driver would drop me off at 8am sharp, hungry, sleepy, tired, I would look at the wall clock waiting for the lunch time. Sometimes I delivered, other days I would sleep walk through the day.
I was dying a slow death, the loneliness, the inferiority complex played with my mental health.
I still remember that evening when my life changed forever. It was bitterly cold and the driver was late picking me up. Everything was closed. I wanted a drink, but there wasn’t enough money to buy anything.
Dear Visitors,
Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions, severely underrepresented in all our Muslim countries from Indonesia to Djibouti. Muslim countries often report the lowest rates of mental health issues, primarily due to a lack of resources, stigma, and lack of awareness. There is a huge shortage of modern psychologists, occupational therapists, and social workers. There’s also stigma and shame; seeking help for psychological issues is often viewed as a personal weakness, discouraging people from seeking early intervention. We need to create more dialogue, engage religious scholars, mosques, educational and local institutes, and promote free, Islamically integrated therapy for all.
We bring you a story from Central Asia, a country with many challenges across all spectrums of life. Please read this story for its moral lessons. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters depicted here are fictitious, and any similarity to actual persons is purely coincidental.
Fighting the Inner Demon in أوزبكستان Ozbekistan
Growing up I didn’t know that I myself would become my own enemy.
I thought I was quite a normal person growing up, I knew how to stay out of trouble & do all the right things to please my family. I was 12 when I came across a pleasure named addiction, chocolate. It worried my mother because of the weight gain & acne on my skin. She limited my access to one chocolate a day. I started to wear lost clothes and baggy jumpers to hide myself. To cover the pimples, I started using my mother’s concealer & blusher. At night when all the lights were off, I would binge on chocolates. I would hide all the evidence in my school bag &the following day, I would dispose of the evidence in a park bin.
I don’t remember a day without chocolate, it was my best friend & my guilty pleasure. My second addiction was alcohol. I got married at the age of 22. It was a strange courtship. My husband introduced me to wine and I took to wine like a fish to the water. The wine would make me happy, confused, disoriented and loud. I would drink so much that there was no room left for the food. I would spend the following day nursing a hangover.
The alcohol also made me oblivious to what was happening around me. I was 23 when my husband decided to send me back home to Tashkent. There was a long list of reasons, fully supported by his family, from my alcoholism to my moods to me being an inconsiderate and shallow wife.
It was a cold welcome at the airport and home, disapproving, angry glances, my heart broke into tiny pieces. I then spent the next three months binge-drinking. My weight plummeted, and I looked 42 instead of 24. I was also getting sicker by the day, the physical pain in my body was getting worse. I was forced into rehab in Türkiye by my family.
I came home after three months, sad, miserable & completely isolated, food became my solace, my companion. I would spend night eating and day sleeping. I felt huge & ugly. Fearful of my relapse to alcohol, all my allowance stopped.
The problem with addiction is that after an hour, it loses the pleasure, what satisfies you and gives you a fake feeling of fullness and being complete later turns into a feeling of desolation, incompleteness and emptiness.
I changed so much physically that my mother was forced to take me to her personal trainer.
She then got me a job in her friend’s office. Nothing ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was applied to me. Our driver would drop me off at 8am sharp, hungry, sleepy, tired. I would look at the wall clock waiting for the lunchtime. Sometimes I delivered, other days I would sleep and walk through the day.
I was dying a slow death, the loneliness, the inferiority complex played with my mental health.
I still remember that evening when my life changed forever. It was bitterly cold, and the driver was late picking me up. Everything was closed. I wanted a drink, but there wasn’t enough money to buy anything.
A building opposite the roadside glinted like a jewel in a cold night. I saw a number of people; men, women and children walking into that building, feeling like ice. I followed two women and walked into the warmth of the mosque. I was told to go to the women’s section. I felt like a foreigner with no head covering and a short skirt. I was given a robe to cover myself and a scarf for my hair. As the women prayed, I sat in the corner, cold & alone.
That’s when I saw a brown box. It was full of donations, an unforgivable thought crossed my mind: I wanted the money for one last drink. I sat close to the box, calculating, waiting for the perfect moment to slip it inside my tote bag. I was so close to the box, fingertips away, when an elderly woman walked into the mosque, she sat next to me and asked me if I had finished praying. To this day, I’m surprised at the response I gave her. I don’t pray, I can’t pray.
She gave me rosary beads and taught me the word which literally saved my life: ‘Allah’. Hold onto this, it’s your companion forever, your light, your savior, your peace.
That night something shifted inside me. My desire to have another drink was growing stronger by the day. The long dreary nights were spent binging, pacing the floor & drinking coffee. Anything to take my mind off alcohol.
I was fired from my job, not wanting my family to know. I sought refuge in that mosque. I would go there sharp 8am and would remain there till 6pm. At 6.15 pm I would walk across to the street, wait outside my former workplace for the driver to pick me up. The purpose of the mosque is worship and learning. For me, it was a place of security and hiding.
The woman who prevented me from stealing, mother of the Imam of the mosque, took me under her wings. You can spend all your time here, it’s a house of God, everyone is welcome, but you must pray & read. You must come clean, in a state of wudu & if you drink, don’t come. I was shocked, how she know I was an occasional drinker. Petrified of losing my hiding place, I agreed to everything.
It took me back to Türkiye in a rehab center, this was after my divorce and my move back to Tashkent from the USA where one day on a trip to Istanbul, I was given a gift of rosary beads. There were recovering people who were given those beads by Ahmed Hulusi:
I have advised many drinkers, in fact alcoholics, to practice Dhaka, where they start doing Dhaka even while in clubs or bars, holding prayer beads in one hand and a drink in the other. Yet, as a result of the profound effects Dhaka has in terms of brain development and the increase of insight, they have autonomously stopped drinking and assumed certain spiritual practices, such as praying five times a day and going on pilgrimage (hajj).
I say Dhaka is the single unique key for an ultimate future because it is the most effective and powerful tool to increase the capacity of the brain.
“They (those who have attained the essence of reality) remember Allah while standing or sitting or (lying) on their sides, and they contemplate the creation of the heavens and the earth (depending on the day, the universe and its depths, or in terms of the brain, the place of the body and its attributes) and say, ‘Our Rabbi, You have not created these things for nothing! You are Subhan (free from creating meaningless things; you are in a state of creating anew at every instant)! Protect us from burning (remorse for not being able to duly evaluate your manifestations).’” 09
She became my teacher. She taught me how to pray & read the Quran. The Arabic words fascinated me. Their shape, their sounds and their mystery intrigued me.
I was safe & in the company of people who didn’t judge. Here appearances didn’t matter, the looks didn’t matter, what mattered was striving towards the path of oneness.
For months, I kept this a secret, my new life. It was hard but the only escape from my house and me. Here there was a stillness, a peace & no addiction. At home, it was another story. The minute I would walk through those gates, a monster would unleash & I would spend the night binging & pacing the hall floors.
When my mother discovered my joblessness, it was ugly. All the rides to the mosque stopped and that week I spent in agony. I was binging so much that I had no memory of falling asleep and sliding into a state of semi-unconsciousness. My jaw line ached, eyes bloodshot red & swollen stomach, while people in my house lived on as if I had no existence.
I mustered courage after a week and made it back to the mosque. I was welcomed & a light engulfed me and peace fell on my heart. All my life I have looked for love and acceptance in the wrong place. Here, at my lowest & with nothing, I was accepted.
And that’s when I decided to recover, to have a clear mind & some self-respect. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. I decided not to suffer. My family and I had everything but Allah. The more steps I took towards recovery and learning, the more things became difficult at home. I sold everything from my clothes to shoes.
Sheikha tried to convince my family that I was no longer an addict & would never go near alcohol, to no avail. It all fell on deaf ears. My access to all the finances was blocked. One thing I could even guarantee myself was that I would no longer touch the bottle, it exposed me, made me shameless & stripped me of my dignity. All addictions are a slow means of self-destruction, whether it’s food or smoking.
My only support came from my spiritual mother and my maternal aunt. With encouragement and support from the Sheikh, I joined a 120-day Quran program in Bukhara. It provided me with a much-needed break from my life in Tashkent, put my family feud on the back & from all the questions about my present state of life. Bukhara was another world. I shared a room with four other students. The food was full, but access was limited. The first forty nights were so difficult, I would lay awake dreaming about food. I experienced mood swings, irritability and wanted to leave. The next forty days, my body accepted the changes, I dreamed less of food and experienced fatigue and stillness. The last forty days in Bukhara were binge free, my mind was active & I wanted to complete my course with high grades. With each meal I clung to my rosary beads and with every bite I would say Bismillah and Alhamdulilah. When your surrounded by like-minded people, seekers, your path to discovering yourself becomes easier. There were days when negativity would consume my mind, but the minute we enter class to learn, everything would disappear. Here I developed friendships for life. Thursday nights were the most special. We would pray and would join the hall, a congregation of Dhaka, for extra prayers. Friday was a day of celebration and festivities and prayers.
After 120 days, when I left Bukhara, I had changed physically and from the inside. Another victory I was unaware of. I no longer felt ashamed of my body and myself. I was absorbed in the world of learning and knowledge. The day I completed my Quran was the day I came back to life fully. We celebrated for hours with other students & my spiritual teacher.
I became the first person in my family after 65 years to complete a Qur’an, to know Arabic and to pray & to wear a hijab.
For the first time in my life I felt complete. My first Ramadan was a revelation to me. We fasted and ate together and prayed together. I was still living at home but would spend many nights in the quarters of the mosque. There were nights at home where I would simply go into the kitchen and binge. Each morning after the binge was another opportunity to reflect & work on myself. It would affect my functionality & I would experience a brain fog. Why would you destroy your health, your relationship with Allah, your journey to success over momentarily transitory pleasures? I slowly changed my eating habits for better health and mental wellbeing. Instead of binging on sugar at night, I would put dates with seeds and tahini by my bedside and a glass of milk with honey.
When the Imam suggested a marriage proposal for his student to me, I accepted. Together, me and my Afghan husband embarked on a new path of learning & spiritual development. When I was given an Ijaza to teach after 7 years of studying, I was beyond happiness & I knew I had found a purpose in my life. It changed my relationship with my family. I had finally won back their trust. To this day, I’m humbled and touched when my father greets me by standing up and kissing my forehead.
I stopped experiencing anxiety & stress around food & people, I started to sleep & my whole being experienced peace.
When my husband got a job in Medina to teach and learn, we were both shocked & speechless.
It’s been over two years now till our move, and we’ve come such a long way. It’s a city that healed our wounds & united us with our family. Our life is simple, but imagine waking up & thinking only about submission & servitude?
Sometimes I think about my past life, and I’m often grateful for all those experiences because I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for those experiences.
The most valuable and life transforming lesson I got from my experience is addiction is transitory, while faith represents the journey towards ultimate healing and lasting freedom. Connecting your soul, heart and mind with Allah can transform your life from hopelessness to hope, providing the foundation you need to break destructive cycles and reclaim your life.
