Pubdate: Sun, 6 Apr 2008
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A19
Copyright: 2008 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Candace Rondeaux, Washington Post Foreign Service
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Opium
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Afghanistan

AFGHANS BATTLE DRUG ADDICTION

Treatment Centers for Women Reflect Increasing Opium Use

KABUL -- The first days were so painful that Mina Gul could barely 
sit upright. Thin and lanky with wide brown eyes, she rubbed the back 
of her neck ceaselessly with fingers stained reddish black by an 
opium pipe. She couldn't shake the nausea. The light was almost 
blinding in the clean, white-walled medical clinic, where she lay 
crumpled in bed for days.

Before that, opium had been about the only thing keeping Gul afloat. 
It started four years ago with the headaches. A relative told her to 
try a bit of opium as a cure. "I tried it once a little -- then the 
next day more, then more again, and then I was addicted," Gul said.

Since then, her husband has stopped working and the eldest of her 
four children is more often on the streets than in school. Gul, 36, 
is spending most of her time in a hospital bed.

Gul is one of 20 women in residential treatment at the Sanga Amaj 
center in Afghanistan's capital. The small, two-story clinic near 
Kabul University is one of 40 drug treatment clinics across 
Afghanistan run by international aid organizations.

More than six years after U.S.-led forces launched a military 
campaign here against the ruling Taliban movement, drug addiction is 
fast becoming a major concern for the government. With opium 
production reaching an all-time high of 6,000 tons last year, 
according to the United Nations, domestic addiction rates in this 
nation of nearly 32 million have also soared. A 2005 U.N. report 
estimated that Afghanistan was home to about 1 million drug abusers.

Among the country's addicts, about 13 percent are women and 7 percent 
are children, Afghan government officials say. Most of the women are 
opium addicts desperate to blunt the trauma of endless war. Many are 
illiterate mothers with unemployed husbands. Most have little in the 
way of job skills, and some became addicts while picking opium 
poppies to earn a living and support their families, said Zalmai 
Afzali, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics.

"Afghanistan has been ravaged by 30 to 35 years of war. Everything 
has been destroyed here, so it's not surprising that people turn to 
drugs," Afzali said.

High rates of addiction have forced aid organizations to step in to 
fill the vacuum left by a government still struggling with an 
insurgency, meager resources and endemic corruption. The number of 
drug treatment clinics has doubled during the past two years, Afzali 
said, with an additional 34 mobile treatment clinics for women 
operating across the country.

Treatment for female addicts is especially difficult, experts here 
say, because women in rural, conservative parts of the country -- 
particularly in places such as Helmand province in the south, the 
world's largest opium-producing region -- are often not allowed out 
of the house. While drug addicts around the world endure shame, the 
stigma for Afghan women who seek treatment can sometimes produce 
violent responses from their families. In a country where the average 
per-capita income is about $1,000 a year, addiction for women often 
leads to desperation.

"We had a patient here who wanted to sell one of her kids," said 
Toorpekay Zazai, a doctor who heads the Sanga Amaj center. "She said 
she didn't have enough money to buy food or clothes for him. Finally, 
we managed to get to her relatives in Canada, who were able to help 
with some money. But there are lots of stories like that from the women here."

About 300 women have successfully completed treatment at Sanga Amaj 
since the center opened last June, Zazai said. Women treated by the 
clinic's three doctors usually stay for at least a month.

The first two weeks are spent purging the body of drugs. Gradually, 
the women begin participating in group therapy and learning skills 
such as sewing, embroidery and knitting. Successful treatment ends 
with a celebratory feast at which residents, staff members and former 
patients share stories of battling addiction.

For every success there is a relapse, doctors at the clinic say. 
Women often spend weeks getting clean, only to return to households 
seized by addiction.

"The risk is that when a woman is an addict, she doesn't get 
treatment, then it will spread to the entire family," Zazai said.

"We have cases where whole families are addicted, so when the woman 
goes home from treatment, the husband is still addicted and you have 
to start all over again." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake