India finds synthetic drug is the love for a new breed of user

[edgarshade]

Guardian

Jason Burke in Delhi
Monday 10 September 2012 15.59 BST

With reader comments

Jahangarpuri is the end of the line, the shiny new metro in India's capital city stops here. Beyond are the ragged edges of the city and dusty farmland.

Satish has been coming to Jahangarpuri for two years. Every morning the 28-year-old squats in the stinking patch of wasteland used by local slum-dwellers as a toilet and injects himself with a needle picked up from among the filth. He says his family in an exclusive suburb on the other side of the city have disowned him but the drugs coursing through his veins render him incoherent before he can say much more. Satish recently switched from heroin to a cocktail of pharmaceutical substitutes.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's recently released World Drug Report 2011, stable or downward trends for heroin and cocaine use in major regions of consumption worldwide are being offset by increases in the use of synthetic and prescription drugs. The use of prescription drugs such as the synthetic opioids and sedatives used by Satish is one of the fastest growing – and least reported – problems in India and other developing countries.

"It is a very big problem here. All my friends from when I was a teenager are users or dead," said Faqir, 32, who used to run a snack shop until his own drug habit forced him to stop. After years of use, Faqir has just been through a month of rehabilitation. There are no state facilities available so Faqir's family sent him to one of the dozens of private centres that have sprung up, unlicensed and unregulated. Run by former addicts without any training, treatment usually consists of effective imprisonment with dozens of other users in a single room and frequent beatings.

Desperate wives and parents pay up to 5,000 rupees (£65) to have a user picked up against their will in the hope that their habit will be broken. "It doesn't work because if you are treated badly you are angry when you leave. You go back to drugs just to make a point," Faqirsaid.

More...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/10/india-synthetic-drug-new-user

 

['medicine cabinet']

Run by former addicts without any training, treatment usually consists of effective imprisonment with dozens of other users in a single room and frequent beatings.

Man that sounds like pure hell. WDing in a room with 20 other ppl. not to mention the frequent beatings. beating time!

 

[ro4eva]

India only found this out now?

Desperate wives and parents pay up to 5,000 rupees (£65) to have a user picked up against their will in the hope that their habit will be broken. "It doesn't work because if you are treated badly you are angry when you leave. You go back to drugs just to make a point," Faqirsaid.

Or to escape/numb the fact that you were basically locked up and forced to endure going cold turkey while singing cumbaya with 19 others in the same predicament? Fuck I would have lost it the first day.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

Funny how the worlds largest democracy (which is supposed to be the most benevolent according to political theory) has this problem and loads of poverty overall, much of which is a few miles out from scientific labs which rival that of MIT.