Roman Povala

* 1978

  • “I knew where my dad kept his savings, under a rug in an envelope. I took everything, my parents’ leather jackets, gold chains, gold. Then I stole everything from my brother, a gold chain he had got for his birthday, this sort of things, valuables. So, yes, I stole at home as long as there was something to steal and I had access to it. And then one would steal outside of home. [We robbed] pharmacies, [stole] cars. And even for fun. You would steal an old Škoda car, you could open and start it with a coin. You didn’t need to do anything, it was an easy theft. One could sell it for parts for a few hundred crowns. Then, one would earn drug money by cutting the drugs themselves. When someone came and it was apparent that they were not experienced and wanted to have a few snorts with friends, I remember – because I knew that they wouldn’t use it intravenously – that I sold chalk to one gal, that sort that climbers use. We used to sell baking soda, it has structure similar to meth. If you cook meth well, it’s crystalline and it has similar bitter taste so not only would people cut meth with baking soda because intravenously, it would do nothing to you in such amount, but straight baking soda would be sold as crystal meth. Those who were not experienced enough would not find out. Or there was this sort of fraud that we made an impression of a huge trade and then it would not happen, we would pretend that the police stormed in and the money was lost. Or, what would be done, “wait here, the meth lab is upstairs and the guy doesn’t want to see anyone else, I’d bring the money to him” and you’d run away through the back entrance. That was always agreed upon beforehand. And, obviously, these tricks were played at the inexperienced. It was about a few thousand, five or ten thousands crowns, no astronomical sums. But, it was money.

  • „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."

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    Praha, 18.02.2018

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory of nations (in co-production with Czech television)
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The very first intravenous dose of crystal meth killed the human being in me.

Current portrait of Roman Povala
Current portrait of Roman Povala
zdroj: fotografie z natáčení

Roman Povala was born on the 31th of October in 1978. He grew up in Havířov in a regular well-adjusted family. He had no troubles in school and since childhood, he was active in sports. Shortly after the 1989 revolution, he started abusing drugs and gradually, his dependence worsened. After having used soft drugs for some time, he started using crystal meth which he also made and distributed. He would acquire money through robberies in private flats or in pharmacies and through frauds within the drug users’ community. Later, he joined the community of Teen Challenge and consequently, he joined the Apostolic church. He was succesfully treated for addiction and then graduated from the School of Missions and Theology in Kolín and became a pastor of the Apostolic church. He regularly meets basic and secondary school students and talks about life with addiction. In 2019, he lived and worked in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm.