Roman Povala

„Actually, at that time, or at least from my point of view, people started talking about it and people started growing it. One could go abroad, at that time, it was possible to gravel abroad, so people would go to the Netherlands and they would bring not only garden variety marijuana but also strong varieties and hashish. They brought chocolate, that’s how we called it. I experimented with those, I was trying, I was searching. I thought that freedom meant that I could do whatever I wanted. It was probably my first major mistake. It was no big deal to get it. I think that weed was here, even drugs, even meth had been there but it had not been that visible before [the Revolution]. The folks who had issues with this sort of addiction, they were a much more closed community than nowadays, they gathered in private flats, or outside the city limits, when there was a abit of wood, a well. I know that in Havířov, under the bus station, there was such a spring and that was a place where nobody of us wuold go. Only after I started messing with drugs, we started going there. Meth was not so widespread. It was there but not that widespread. People would use Alnagon [now discontinued painkiller; mixture of codeine, caffeine, acetylsalicylic acid and phenobarbital], also called just A. There were packages upon packages of Alnagon because that was where the Havířov junkies would meet and consume drugs at that spring.”

"After this encounter with that doctor, I was facing a dilemma. Would I go on and snort meth which had caused me health problems or should I grab the needle. And I know that this was a major breaking point of what I was to expect. I became aware that I was not able to drop it. On the other hand, when we talked about how I consider these people meth heads - I was one of those who had had this opinion, and the first intravenous dose of crystal meth killed me, to put it that way. Not physically, but as a person. I gave up. At that moment, I became a part of a group of people whom I despised, whom I saw as rabble and plague, just filthy meth heads. And suddenly, there I was, Roman Povala, a sportsman. Suddenly, I was in that place."