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| Sunday, 22 June 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Drug abuse and rehabilitation: Time to talk about it The week June 23-29 has been declared "Drugs Control Week" with drug control activities organised for stakeholders in drug supply and demand reduction, viz. Departments of Police, Excise, Customs and Prisons, Ministry of Education and NGOs against drug abuse. by Jayanthi Liyanage
Do you know that Sri Lanka is estimated to have 50,000 heroin users and 200,000 cannabis users? That out of present local prison convictions, 44 per cent are related to drug offences? Sri Lanka is also a major transit location for drug smugglers, being at a strategic point to the Golden Triangle and not even 10 per cent of narcotic drugs entering here are being detected by the law enforcement authorities, statistics show. The local habitual heroin users come mainly from the urban groups and young males in the age group of 20-35. It appears that the rehabilitation efforts of NGOs and governmental organisations are meeting with a degree of failure. The rehabilitated either return to the rehabilitation centres, or worse, they go back to the drug habit.
Sugath Dissanayake, Manager of "Seth Sevana", one of the four heroin rehabilitation centres run by the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board, cites several reasons why the rehabilitated suffer a relapse. "The first one is how strong is the client's own need to keep away from the habit. The second is the degree of family support he receives and the third is the support of his community. Finally, his durability as a rehabilitated individual depends on the way the entire society views him." This points to an urgent need for Sri Lankan children, families, peers, teachers and communities to discuss drugs candidly and commit their responsibility to do something about it. A caring and listening family is the biggest shield against drugs and the best way of reducing demand for drugs. The two stories we narrate too, show that the heaviest responsibility in drug rehabilitation lies on the family and the public shoulder. If we persist in stereotyping the addicted and the rehabilitated as 'social outcasts' or 'vermin' and still draw boundaries of mistrust around them so as to distance them from the mainstream society, all efforts lavished on rehabilitation could dissolve to nothing. One notices that Dissanayake does not call his service-seekers "patients" but "clients". Drug addiction is not a sickness, he swiftly drills in us. "It's a dependence sorely relying on one's individual perception and attitudes. To get rid of this dependence, we use the psychological intervention method which is non-medicinal." "A client's physical and psychological environment can be changed by arousing in him strength to change his thinking about heroin addiction and his freedom from it," explains Dissanayake, stressing that the entire exercise of rehabilitation is dependent on the whole-hearted commitment of the client's family, parents and his employer and colleagues to accept him back as a 'wholesome' person. "The rejected often has no alternative than to return to the vicious circle of addiction. The quality of human values operating in his immediate society is the key factor of his return to normalcy!" ********* What a mother of a heroin addicted son has to say... "As an innocent babe in my womb, I was happy when he kicked me with his unborn feet. Now, what he does as a fully-grown son is slashing my heart," is what this mother, who brought her 24-year old son to a rehab centre, told us crying. All mothers cry when they bring their addicted children to the centre, we were told. Often, they alone shoulder the heaviest burden in bringing their children back to normalcy - all alone, and amidst severe condemnation from family and society. This widow, who had returned from the Middle East to find that her youngest seven-year old, left to the care of her married sister, had become a teenage heroin addict, was no exception. "I sent home lakhs of rupees for his education at a prestigious boy's college, and later, at a computer institute. But my sister had not cared enough to probe where he hung out in his spare time and which company he kept. Now even his own older brothers and sisters shun him and chase him out of their homes, calling him 'Kudda'. Whether he is a 'Kudda' or not, he is still my son. How can I leave him in the lurch when there is no one to take care of him? What will happen to him when I die?" In the hope of weaning him from heroin, she found him a pretty wife. But heroin, always separating the two, soured the marriage. The young wife left him with the jeering words, "A useless Kudda!". Then, the mother delivered her ultimatum to the son, "If you want your wife back, get yourself cured! How could she come back to a husband who does nothing but crouch in a corner and hunch with his head bowed?" The hefty and good-looking young man has come willingly for rehabilitation and hope he can win his pretty wife back someday. We are yet to see what he will make of his future, as only his insight and will power can raise him above the muck and give him back a "human" life. (A true story) ********** A client speaks... "Nobody ever told me I could be completely cured of my addiction to heroin!", is the startling revelation of Priyantha, currently a client at a drug rehabilitation centre. "There are so many of my friends outside this centre with the belief firmly drilled into their heads that they can never get over the heroin habit during their lifetime."
If you are addicted to drugs, do not ever believe this counter-productive and anti-health statement, the origins of which, as the head of a rehab centre says, could be clearly traced to a drug seller. The best news of his life time came when a colleague told him of rehabilitation and he thought of approaching a rehab centre. Why? Because, at 35 years of age, after 11 long, tormented years of addiction, he had had enough. He was falling sick and his young wife and daughters too, felt they had gone through enough. His sick bouts were a recurrence of anxiety, sweating, yawning, running nose and watering of the eyes, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle cramps, loss of appetite, dehydration and chillness alternating with hot flushes when his body temperature rose. "I was so totally addicted that even to eat, or to have a bath, I needed a 'shot' without which, such normal activity was sheer torture," says Priyantha. "Taking a shower when I was sick without heroin, burnt my whole body as if cold water is being poured over a red hot iron!" If heroin caused him so much pain and unpleasantness in life, what lured him to this "deceiving Delilah" in the first place? "I was out of school after A/Levels and earning good money as a construction contractor. Like my other young friends, I too was attracted to the opposite sex. They told me that heroin is the best way to get rid of my calf-shyness, make me bolder and be a good sexual performer." Did heroin give him all that his friends promised? "It did, at first," he says ruefully. "But after about six months, I started experiencing the withdrawal symptoms or the 'sickness'. Then, my need of heroin was not to make me a sexual hero, but to restrain me from sickness, though only for short intervals. What I inhaled once a month, increased to three times a week, and then, once a day, and finally, three times day." He swindled money from his construction funds to buy heroin and was soon out of work, though married by then. He found another job, yet his contribution to the home fires kept dwindling as much of it was being spent on heroin. The Police nabbed him once, but the moment he was let out from the remand, he could think of no alternative but to cringe back to the habit. Now, at the rehab centre, Priyantha is exercising his will power to get rid of his drug habit. He firmly believes he could stay away from heroin for the rest of his life. (A true story with the name changed for anonymity.) ************ Signs to watch for in your child * Change in friends |
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News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
In searching for the sources of failure, it becomes essential for all
concerned Sri Lankans to sit down and talk about the drug abuse and
rehabilitation with sincere commitment. It is indeed to highlight this
need for communication that this year's theme of June 26, the
International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, launched by
United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, is "Let's Talk about
Drugs".
