Former teenage addict: 'It's too easy to get alcohol here'

Jacob can't remember why he made "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses his ring tone three years ago, but he certainly remembers that he was anything but sweet at the time.

"It's been exactly one year and eight days since I am clean from alcohol and drugs," the now 20-year-old Jacob (an alias) told Anglo File earlier this month, hours after telling his life story to the Knesset's Committee on the Rights of the Child, which debated making it more difficult for minors to purchase alcohol.

"I don't do either anymore. I went through all that garbage, drinking and smoking pot and taking pharmaceuticals and cocaine and mushrooms and other stuff. But today, I am a person who plays football three times a week, who has a job and who speaks in front of the Knesset."

Addressing the committee, Jacob reminisced without lecturing the politicians about his views - the story spoke for itself. "It's hard for me [being clean in Israel], because in every store I walk into I can buy alcohol and it's the same for other kids," he told them.

The son of an anesthesiologist and a stay-at-home mom from Long Island, New York, Jacob was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder as a child. "I just didn't get along with the people in school, and after my parents realized that school in America just didn't work for me they sent me to Israel," he said.

Jacob had already been drinking for two years when he came to the Golan Heights at age 14. "During the week I went to school but on the weekends we came down [to Jerusalem] to get drunk. "It's crazy how easy it was," he said.

He was always the one buying the drinks for the clique, he recalled, Vodka Perfect in 1.75 liter bottles, for NIS 42 each. "We were three or four friends, everyone gave 12 shekel and that's it. We drank all weekend long, every week, it was ridiculous."

Soon alcohol wasn't enough anymore and Jacob started doing harder drugs. "I did basically everything," he said with a relaxed voice. "It was so easy to get." After high school, he returned to the States for half a year before officially immigrating to Israel, where he planned to join the army.

But instead of seeing a recruiting officer he fell into the hands of an undercover cop, who caught him dealing drugs. "Selling was easy, I knew where I could get the stuff and I knew the people who wanted it. But I didn't sell a lot, I didn't even make a profit. I just made sure I have enough [drugs] for myself."

Jacob said, he spent a month in jail. "Then they told me: either you go to rehab or you're going back to prison." Jacob enrolled at the Retorno International Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Addictions near Beit Shemesh - and came back clean.

"It was [seven] very hard [months], but then it was also an amazing experience," Jacob said. Out of gratitude to the center, he volunteered for another month after his therapy, "to help out," he noted.

Today Jacob lives with a friend in an apartment in downtown Jerusalem and occasionally paints houses for a living. He still hopes to be drafted once he finishes his scheduled six months of community service. He knows his chances are slim but still dreams of joining the Shaldag Unit - an elite Air Force commando. "Yes, I've done wrong, and yes, I need to pay for it. But I think that the best way for me to give something back to the country is by joining the army and defending our country against our enemies."