At the start of the evening, a group of eight rowers is waiting at the scaffolding in front of the Amsterdam Public Library. Some smoke a cigarette, others take care of their blisters or try to sleep. 80 of the 200 kilometers from the rowing trip is behind them. To the left of the scaffolding, a luxury sloop on. Empty bottles of wine on the table. The people on board take a beer with you on the road.
Wine and beer remain far from the sloop of the eight rowers.
“You stay addicted for your life,” says Adrie Sluimer. “Just as someone with a peanut allergy does not eat peanuts, I never drink alcohol again.” Benjamin Ooms appeals to him: “If I start, I can’t stop anymore. For me, use is equal to death.” Sluimer (46), former marine and experience expert, is the initiator of rowing in recovery, intended for people who are recovering or recovered from an addiction, especially alcohol and drugs. They are affiliated with addiction care institution Antes, part of the Parnassia Group. The sloop rowing, a battle for recovery, is the annual high point. This year is the fourth edition. Two hundred kilometers, from Den Helder to Rotterdam. Four teams – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta – alternate each other in Boot ‘The Recovery’ every ten kilometers. The other three drive by bus to the next exchange place. At the end of the tour, on the Maas in Rotterdam, the participants row in four different boats.
Sluimer himself became addicted to cocaine after a broadcast in 2003. He lost his job. Rowing helped him during his recovery. “I felt human again and not just a patient – I wanted to pass that on to others.”
Antes clients can voluntarily register for rowing in recovery. The condition is that they are clean. The rowers train a few times a week in Rotterdam, The Hague and Zaandam. “They train together for rowing competitions, including the Great River Race in London,” says Sluimer.
Canceling means that a ‘hole’ will be put in the boat. This naturally creates a sense of responsibility and discipline. “You can’t if you don’t feel like it anymore, such as football, stop. Your teammates have to go through,” says Benjamin Ooms (31). He was addicted to both alcohol and drugs and is now clean for four years.
Joke
Midnight in Haarlem. Team Alpha – the only women’s team – is rowing undisturbed. Belt in the water. Hang back. Pick up powerful. Leaf out. And again. But the first ailments are starting to play. A rowing has suffered from her stomach – “that ice cream from Net”, another pain in her little finger. “Oh well, we are rowing with the belts we have.” There is a lot of laughter, word jokes are popular, the atmosphere remains good despite everything. Important, according to uncles. “We are all literally in the same boat. It feels like a very close group of friends, almost as a family.”
Addiction is not brain disease, but repeated behavior, says Arie Dijkstra, professor of health psychologist at the University of Groningen. “It works, so someone does it again.” Crucial with addiction is the internal struggle: an addict knows that the behavior is bad, but it is not possible to stop.
A meaningful life can help people who had an addiction in the past, says Dijkstra. “They often get addicted because something is missing in their lives.” According to him, the real work for an addiction is in “bringing life back in order.” A sport such as sloop rowing can offer former addicts meaning. He emphasizes that someone can also feel more annoying after a lesser training, which increases the chance of relapse.
Not ‘third half’
The participants in rowing in recovery first follow a regular treatment in the clinic. “But then they have to continue working at home on their recovery,” says Adrie Sluimer. And rowing helps. “They become part of a group, and want to stay that way, so they make sure they are clean.”
The ‘third half’ is therefore not in the rowers. “We skip it consciously,” says Sluimer. Even alcohol -free beer avoid the rowers. “My brain recognizes the bottle, the scent, the taste,” he says. “But it misses the intoxication. Then I hear that voice in my head:” Just stick the label of an alcohol -free beer on a real beer. Nobody notices it. “
It is now half past one in the afternoon, the next day. The rowers have been awake for 33 hours. The four teams now sail on four boats for the final through the high waves of the Maas. Due to the flow, this is the toughest part of the trip. Some rowers get bins of water over them – after the rain of the last night that nobody is bothered anymore.
After the Rotterdam mayor Carola Schouten has given the final signal from a sailing boat, the rowers displace meatballs. Uncles says that some rowers can no longer do without rowing. “But if you have to be addicted to something, rather row.”
Benjamin Ooms (31) from IJmuiden‘My recovery is the toughest I’ve ever done’
‘At the start of my addiction I worked in the hospitality industry. I woke up, hugged the toilet bowl, drank the last bit of beer from yesterday or smoked a big joint. Around noon I was able to function again, but after working hours my regular round started: coffee shop, supermarket, home, using.
“Addiction is more than the means, it is behavior. And that started with me early. I am from a divorced family, I am abused and was placed young from home. Around the age of fourteen I started smoking and my first joint at the age of sixteen. From the age of eighteen I was blowing and drunk daily. In 2020 I drank between the six and eight half -liters a day.
“A few years later I heard voices and thought that people wanted to do something to me. One day the police were at the door. I opened in my hands a kitchen knife of 26 centimeters. After a night’s sleep in jail, my best friend picked me up:” You need help. ”
“I was lucky: getting clean in the clinic was easy. But when I got home I was just clean, not recovered. Within eight o’clock I had achieved another joint and I was quickly on my old use again.
“Only when I really asked for help, it started my recovery; it is the toughest thing I have ever done. Because I became aware of my own behavior and the way I dealt with feelings. I was afraid that everything I did was not good enough. A lot of fear and stress came from this, which I tried to use. I slowly got my critical voice under control.”
Adrie Sluimer (46) from Rotterdam‘I lost everything in a few days’
‘In 2003 I had realized my child’s dream: I became a marine at the corps. But that same year I lost everything. Someone offered me cocaine on broadcast in Curaçao. Under the influence of alcohol it seemed funny to try – but after that I couldn’t live without it. Drugs at Defense means one thing: dismissal.
“In addition to my job, I also lost my identity and my self -esteem. I dampened the grief by using even more; I didn’t want to feel anymore. I soon lived on the street. Several times I ended up in the hospital. The last time I was in the IC because I survived. I survived, as if there was an angel on my shoulder.
“My parents picked me up and I was allowed to live with them again. I said it went better, but I lied and continued to use it. In addition, I ended up in crime, I started acting in illegal fireworks. In 2010 I was arrested.
“After my prison sentence, I signed up at a clinic in Limburg at the end of 2011. It was my 41st recording. The forty times before were at regular institutions, but that never clicked. The care providers did not understand me. In Limburg it was different. The woman who ran the clinic also had an addiction history. I thought you understand me.
“During that recording I met someone from Rotterdam. He was clean and told about self -help groups, where addicts talk to each other. After the treatment in Limburg I went with him. And I kept going, to this day. Because becoming a clean is one thing, staying clean is just as difficult.”
