***I want to stay neutral when it comes to politics. This is a personal reflection, not a criticism. I fully respect our former president. Im not glorifying Duterte or condemning him blindly; Im reflecting on how my understanding evolved. 

I used to believe President Duterte did what had to be done. That peace came with a price, and sometimes, that price meant letting go of compassion to preserve order. During his time, the streets of the Philippines felt safer. People feared doing drugs. The violence was brutal, but the message was clear.

I silently supported him then. I respected him. He was my president.

But time changes people. Distance changes people. And suffering, especially the quiet, private kind, has a way of breaking open your eyes.

I’ve come to realize that many of the people we write off as criminals are just broken in ways society never tried to understand. Some were addicted, yes, but addiction is so often the symptom, not the root. Trauma. Poverty. Loneliness. No one dreams of becoming a burden. People just fall through the cracks.

And I know that now because I almost did.

I was living alone in a foreign country, trying to make something of myself, but inside I was unraveling. I was depressed. I took risperidone and sertraline for two years. I kept working through it. I never told most people. But I fought to stay alive. And here’s the truth that stings: if I had been in the Philippines, with no NHS, no GP, no access to mental health care, who knows where I would have ended up? Would I be labelled too, as a problem to eliminate?

Antidepressants and antipsychotics helped me the way some illegal drugs help others, only mine came with supervision and a prescription pad. But both came from the same place: pain.

So I look back now at that war on drugs, that era where “peace” was enforced through fear, and I feel differently. Not because I’ve become soft, but because I’ve learned to see deeper.

What we needed wasn’t mass graves. What we needed was a system. Support. Somewhere for the broken to go before they broke more things, or themselves.

Here in the UK, even people who never “recover” from drug addiction are still given food, housing, care. It’s not glamorous. But it’s life. And maybe they remain a burden. But so what? What else are governments for, if not to carry those who can’t carry themselves?

This doesn’t mean I hate Duterte now. No. It means I’ve changed. It means I’ve lived through my own kind of war, silent and unseen, and came out with more mercy than before.

And maybe that’s the point. The real peace we should be aiming for isn’t just the kind that silences the streets. It’s the kind that reaches the soul before it’s too late.