By: Radha Basu

ADDICTS often have low self-esteem but they need not be underachievers.

Up until two years ago, Mr Steven Tan (not his real name), 35, was a high-profile corporate jetsetter, whose professional expertise led him to be quoted more than once in The Straits Times.

He earned a comfortable six-figure salary and lived in a semi-detached home.

What few knew then - or even now - is that Mr Tan has been battling an addiction to sex and party drugs for nearly half his life.

He is still in the same profession - though he asked that this be withheld to protect his identity - but has a less demanding and lower-paying job now, to help him focus on getting well.

Articulate and self-assured, the National University of Singapore graduate believes his problems are rooted in a dysfunctional and traumatic childhood.

Until he was 17, his father repeatedly molested him. His mother turned a blind eye. Subjected to the repeated torture, Mr Tan says he grew up feeling unloved.

He lost his virginity at 19 to an expatriate housewife - the mother of a child he had been tutoring. That relationship lasted six years but he was not faithful.

By his early 20s, Mr Tan had a regular girlfriend, his 'college sweetheart', but was also sleeping with other willing friends and casual acquaintances. He also began visiting brothels.

'I needed to be loved - needed emotional gratification - so I began trading in sexual currency,' he says. Some weeks, he slept with four or more partners.

By 25, he had proposed to his girlfriend and even got a Housing Board flat. But something soon happened that was about to change his life forever.

Via a chatline, he met a 16-year-old prostitute, who he says was 'attractive and intelligent' - but also addicted to marijuana, methamphetamine, Ecstasy and ketamine.

'She prostituted herself to feed her vices,' he says. Soon, Mr Tan felt like a giddy teenager himself, falling in love with her and wanting to look after her. By then, the girl's parents had found out about her drug use and threatened to report her to the police.

She walked out and persuaded Mr Tan to book her into budget hotels in Geylang where he would join her every night.

Mr Tan says his main motivation was to protect the girl and get her off drugs. One night, when he was imploring her yet again, she turned around and said: 'If you think it's so easy to quit, why don't you do drugs yourself and show me.'

'Fool that I was, I thought I could lead by example - try drugs and then quit.'

But he got hooked. By then, he had rented an apartment in the Orchard area for him and the girl. He was also, for the first time in his life, monogamous. But he had a new addiction.

After being fed a string of lies - usually about how his long absences were due to work - his fiancee found out about the 16-year-old. The wedding was off.

From then it was a long slide downhill. By 2000, his regular drug use had led him to be fired from his job. His teenage girlfriend had also begun to see other men.

One night, during a violent argument, she called the police. He says he was lucky that the police did not suspect drug use. But since he was behaving 'strangely' - he tore up his mobile phone warranty card into bits, for instance, and asked the police officers to count the pieces - they sent him for treatment at the Institute of Mental Health.

He spent two months in rehab there as an inpatient. He also began attending group therapy sessions, but dropped out, feeling they were not working for him.

Upon his discharge, he found another job and started rebuilding his career. Between 2001 and 2007, he was free of drugs, but went back to his womanising ways.

His career flourished once more and he began splurging on 'high-class prostitutes' - on occasions spending up to $4,500 a night.

But mentally, he was a wreck. 'No matter how much I earned, I still felt like a pauper because no one loved me.' His acute feelings of being 'unloved' caused him to harbour suicidal thoughts.

Mr Tan is now on an expensive cocktail of drugs prescribed by his psychiatrist at Raffles Hospital and has begun psychotherapy with a counsellor, who is helping him reshape his outlook.

He has been 'clean' - no womanising or drugs - since early last year, but is unsure whether this will last. His psychotherapy sessions have taught him that he had 'flawed core beliefs'.

'I kept blaming my circumstances, but the problem, really, was me.'

This article was first published in The Sunday Times.