REHABISTAN - PART 2Queuing for Recovery at Heroin's Ground Zero
TEXT BY JEREMY KELLY, PHOTOS BY TRAVIS BEARD
 n the pockmarked southern suburbs of Kabul is the Nejat Center, which was set up in 2002 and is the oldest drug-treatment facility in Afghanistan. Funded by a group of NGOs, it operates on a structure that has worked with some success in Pakistan since the mid-1990s. Demand on the center is so high that prospective patients, desperate to get in, are first required to complete up to three months of voluntary daily counseling to assess their commitment to kicking the habit. On the day I visited, I sat with a group of 25 men who were listening to a former user talk about how he weaned himself off heroin. The group ranged in age from late teenagers to long-bearded grandfathers. One had brought his young son while another was a policeman, in uniform but not on duty.
After the group session, the center’s director, Dr. Tariq Suliman, guided me through the clinic. Some users, he told me, beat their addiction during the three-month counseling, but for most it’s a daily struggle. Of the 1,700 on the waiting list, only five patients a week are selected for the residential program, which involves going two weeks cold turkey. Upon arrival, they are washed, have their heads shaved, and are given fresh, clean clothes. They are all taught personal hygiene during the initial counseling, and for the first few days, they will try to sleep as much as possible.
When we entered the detox room it was 11 AM and all five patients were still asleep. One of them woke up when he heard us speaking and cracked a smile and shook my hand. His name is Mohammad Salim and he was introduced to opium in Pakistan and for the past nine years has been battling to stop. It’s hard, he says, when there are few jobs and it’s so easy to score. He is determined not to go on being a junkie dad. “I was in a very dark place. Now I am trying to get my head in the light,” he says.
Another patient, Maqsoud, checked himself in after he missed his infant daughter’s funeral. He had used some of the 800 afghanis ($16) his father had given him for the ceremonial cloth and gone out and bought heroin instead. When he woke from his drug-induced slumber, he returned to his family’s home to find that his daughter had already been buried and he had missed the whole thing. Ironically it was the wake-up call he needed and the only reason he is now in the middle of a full recovery in the Nejat Center.
Dr. Suliman says war has introduced many Afghans to drugs—and still does.
“When you take drugs, you see the helicopter as a butterfly,” he says, recounting the description given to him by patients. The center dispenses about 100 syringes a week and as many condoms and has a success rate of between 30 and 35 percent.
TO BE CONTINUED:
REHABISTAN | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Nov 11, 2009 wrote:
you never see trees or grass in these hellhole | | Anonymous, on Sep 1, 2009 wrote:
no wonder they are so fucking pissed at us and want to Jihad our asses | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote:
there is a 12 step fellowship that is worldwide | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote:
potato needs to be mashed. Wah wah wah like the world isn’t a bad place because of bad people,like most of you.Don’t worry eugenics is coming your way,so you wont have to look and think about things too much longer. | |
| potato, on Aug 8, 2009 wrote:
Crunk city
God rest your soul,’cos i fucking wont ! | | |
| potato, on Aug 8, 2009 wrote:
About methadone,right on !
i left a smack habit for a
physeptone (methadone) habit,
so so hard to come off !.
Went to prison & got off.
(really not as easy as i write !)
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| potato, on Aug 8, 2009 wrote:
The Russian army (when it left)took
thousands of heroin addicts with
it.I believe that it was the begining
of the ’russian mafia’.
once the ready supply of poppy based
drugs was denied to them they used
the infrastructure of the military to
import & distribute & sell heroin !.
History !!!!. | |
| komodo, on Aug 7, 2009 wrote:
damn. shotgunning for kids. that’s so fucked up i never would have thought it existed. i guess the daughter already got hers. it would be one way to do things when you couldn’t get a babysitter at a moment’s notice. | |
| DoubleJ, on Aug 7, 2009 wrote:
this does not surprise me. | | Anonymous, on Aug 7, 2009 wrote:
about methadone, it is more addictive, the shit gets in your bones and takes a month to kick, it is like trying to cure whiskey addiction with vodka, methadone is shit, avoid avoid. | | Anonymous, on Nov 11, 2008 wrote:
heroin all the cool kids are doing it. | | |
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