Mostafa

How to tell if your waiter is a drug addict

Check your restaurant bill carefully - it may tell you your waiter is a drug addict. Yes, that’s true, or at least that’s what a former drug addict told me in an interview.

Mostafa was a waiter at one of Alexandria’s famous restaurants. He had his whole future before him.

“I dreamt of the day I would get some money to be able to start a family,” he told me while reclining on his bed at a rehabilitation center for drug addicts, 130km north of Cairo. There, he now helps addicts to recover - a painful journey he himself had to go through to come clean after 10 years of smoking hashish, taking ecstasy pills and injecting himself with heroin.