Ex-Citizen TV reporter Kelvin Andande opens up about drug and alcohol addiction

Former Citizen TV reporter Kelvin Andande has opened up about his battle with drug and alcohol addiction, sharing a personal account of how his choices nearly destroyed his life and how he found the strength to turn things around.

In a TikTok video released as he turned 34, Andande recounted the extent of his addiction and the turning point that set him on a path to recovery. He revealed that as recently as late last year, his life had spiralled out of control. He described his home in Ongata Rongai, as resembling a peddler’s den except everything in it was for his own consumption.

He disclosed that he was smoking cigarettes and weed, drinking heavily, and smoking shisha regularly. “If sometime last year, around October or November, you would have sent me 1,000 shillings, that money would have ended up in my local club somewhere in Gataka, and I wouldn’t have had fare back home by midnight,” he said. “That’s how deep I was.“

He added that if he received 70,000 shillings over a weekend, by Monday he would be broke often without even having paid his rent. Reflecting on the isolation of addiction, Andande noted that the hardest part was that no one else knew how far he had fallen. “The saddest part about it is, people out there didn’t know. It was just me who knew how deep I had sunk,” he said.

The former TV reporter said the decision to change came from within. At 33, he told himself: “This is not it. This is not what I want.” The turning point came in December 2024. Two friends, Janai and Musungu, visited him in Ongata Rongai and noticed he was smoking a habit he had not struggled with in earlier years. They confronted him about it.

Their words triggered something in him. That night, while out with friends at a venue in Rongai, Andande made a decision that came from deep within him, not forced by anyone else. “I started feeling that I’m really, really tired,” he recalled. “I told them, ‘I think this is it for me. This is my last one.’ They thought I meant my last drink of the night. But what I meant was it was the last time I was going to smoke anything.“

That night, 20 December 2024, marked the beginning of his journey to sobriety. The following day, he set out with a plan to travel upcountry and return in January. But as he put it, “God had other plans.” He travelled to Embu to join his brothers for Christmas and has remained there since. He stopped drinking and smoking. While the urge to smoke still arises at times, he said it faded during that period, and his desire to drink had already left him as he grew older.

In Embu, he shared his plan with his brothers: to go home, farm, and live a simpler life. His brothers, however, saw it differently. They recognised that he had been a successful reporter at Citizen TV and NTV, and they worried that returning to the village would leave him recounting stories of his former glory in bars.

Andande’s decision to speak publicly about his experience comes as he turns 34. By sharing his story, he hopes to encourage others who may be silently struggling with addiction to seek help and recognise that change is possible.