I, hurt myself today, to see if I still feel, I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real, the needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting, try to kill it all away, but I remember everything…
The imagery in Nine inch Nails’ song Hurt, famously covered by Johnny Cash, echoes through the mind like a horrible nightmare that should be forgotten, but ends up etched in the memory.
For millions of people in Pakistan, and around the world, this dream is a reality.
In the case of 16-year-old Bilal, it all started with what appeared to be a burning cigarette butt thrown away by a smoker, and culminated in a heroin addiction.
Bilal, who is now in a drug rehabilitation programme at Dost Foundation Centre, Hayatabad, said he was earning Rs250 a day working for a nanbai (baker). However, he was unexpectedly caught in the web addiction when he picked up that fateful half burnt ‘cigarette’, which turned out to be a joint.
“One of my cousins was addicted to hashish and I started smoking with him,” Bilal told The Express Tribune.
When his family came to know about his drug use, they began rebuking him for it, but to no avail. To his family utter disbelief, he started using heroin, which he picked up from his ‘friends’. “My friends used to smoke heroin and I started using the drug in their company,” Bilal recalled.
Soon, his drug habit started costing him Rs150 a day, over half of his income.
“I used to go to Karkhano Market in Peshawar and to purchase a gram of heroin every day for months, until my family admitted me in this centre.”
Fortunately for Bilal, after spending around a month at this facility, his mind has cleared, and he realises that that drugs are destructive. He says he will try to stop other people from smoking up and taking other, harder drugs.
There are around 5,000-6,000 street children in Peshawar, most of whom use different kind of drugs, ranging from glue (Samad Bond), hashish, heroin, naswar and even tranquillisers. However, most of the children this scribe spoke with at the rehabilitation centre admitted that the gateway drug was tobacco.
Ishaluddin, a 12-year-old with a mentally handicapped father, also started out smoking with his friends. Islah, who used to be a scavenger, quickly moved from cigarettes to hashish and then heroin.
“I used collect garbage and use all the money on drugs,” Islah told The Express Tribune.
When he came to the centre, with sunken eyes, a blank expression and an unsteady walk, the little boy’s lack of sobriety was easy to spot. Unfortunately for him, he said that as his father was not mentally fit; therefore, nobody noticed his drug addiction. However, now he says that he will not use drugs any longer, as he accepts that they are dangerous.
Dr Nadeem Afridi, a medical officer at the rehabilitation centre was of the view that the majority of street children are drug addicts. “They start by sniffing glue and eating naswar. Smoking is the second stage and this opens the door to for heroin,” Afridi opines.
“These children refer to each other as ‘Samad Bondi’ and ‘Naswaris’ and using more powerful drugs just swells their egos,” Afridi said.
He said that most of them start with naswar and glue sniffing; however, at a certain point, these things can no longer sedate them, so they start smoking hashish and then start using heroin with cigarettes before they are ready to chase the dragon (direct inhalation of burning heroin fumes).
“The last stage of heroin addiction is called ‘Gunjai (shaved head) Nasha’, wherein these children make a cut on their body, mostly on the head, and then place heroin against the cut, allowing it to be absorbed very slowly via tissue perfusion,” Afridi said.
He said that this method will often result in overdoses and death; in part attributable to the highly increased tolerance and physical dependence on the drug.
Beating drug addiction requires that one confront their demons instead of trying to erase them with drugs. While it is never easy, for those who do, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
As Dr Afridi noted, “Street children who part ways with addictions later start calling smoking a useless addiction.”
Published in The Express Tribune, June 2nd, 2011.
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