Diving Into Hell: Journey Of A Drug Addict From Kashmir To Punjab And Back

Mushtaq, (name changed) 23, a tall young man admitted in one of the main drug de-addiction centers in Srinagar would pass off a model.

His bluish eyes, blonde hair, using a mix of English and Urdu while talking, he looks lik any other young man having aspirations and dreams.

Once, he also had a dream to become a successful lawyer. But that was only a long time ago. Drug addiction has now turned him into a broken man with hopelessness crushing him every day.

It all began in 2017, when Mushtaq was a teenager. He went to Sonamarg, a tourist destination, around 80 km northwest of Srinagar, along with his seven other friends when he was studying in class XI.

Among his friends, two took him aside and they started walking towards the river Sindh. There they sat and asked Mushtaq casually whether he would have a heroine shot. Mushtaq says he was shocked by the offer.

In the meanwhile one of his friends took out a vial from his pocket, filled it with some white powder, which was carefully kept in a foil paper.  They put powder in the vial and mixed 10 ml water to it. “My friend administered it to himself on his right arm. Usually every addict starts taking an injectable start with the forearm,” says Mushtaq.  Then his second friend took the same vial, put in it to remaining powder from the foil paper and mixed 10 ml water to it and injected himself. Mushtaq was watching all this curiosity and horror.

In his entire life he has been afraid of injections. He would refuse to visit a doctor even if in severe pain fearing the doctor would prescribe injection. Now he was watching his friends inject themselves with heroin. Heroin is an opioid drug made from morphine, a natural substance taken from the seed pod of the various opium poppy plants.

After taking their dose, his friends started mocking him that he will not be able to take the injection and “get feeling of being in heaven.” He was reluctant. But they persisted and he took the challenge. His friend opened another foil paper, took powder from it and mixed water in it and injected him first heroin dose. “That day I felt so happy. I was really in heaven. I cannot describe that happiness. I cannot explain it to you. I was on the banks of Sindh but I was feeling I was flying in sky,” he says.

He says after the first injection, he took a number of cigarettes. “This is what usually happens. After you take intravenous (IV) heroin, you take a number of cigarettes,” he adds.

When Mushtaq took first injection, those were times other drug addicts in the Valley would prefer to sniff, snort or smoke cannabis or take medical opioids and intravenous heroin addiction was very rare.

Mushtaq took the second heroin injection in 15 days’ time. “Those very friends came to me and insisted on having a second dose. This time I was more than willing,” he says.

After he did a second heroine IV dose, he says, he behaved very well with everyone.

“I was not talking to an old friend. He met me the day after I had taken the dose. I behaved with him nicely and greeted him. He was surprised by what was happening. You don’t feel malice against anyone after you take the dose,” he adds.

In 2017, he did around 20 injections. In 2018 he reduced the water content in the vial to get what he says, “High Steam.” “We would do it in our vehicle. At times in our home without my parents getting any idea of what I am doing,” he adds.

“My father has a good business. But he wanted me to be a lawyer. For two years I could take heroin on regular intervals and was successful in hiding it from my family as well,” says Mushtaq.

In 2019, his father sent him to Punjab to pursue a law degree. It is there he started taking the heroine twice in week and then thrice in a week and then at times seven days a week. Last year, when he returned home, his parents started having doubts about his well-being as he often started complaining of pain. They confronted him. He broke down and narrated the whole story. They took him to a doctor, who prescribed anti-depressant drugs.

The anti-depressants, according to him, helped him and kept him away from heroin.

But, he says, when he went back to Punjab he couldn’t get antidepressants there and if they were available, they were costlier than heroin. “Then I started taking drugs again. I called my parents in December last year. They suggested that I return home. And here they showed me to psychiatrists who admitted me in this drug de-addiction centre,” he says.  For the past 16 days he has been admitted in the center and he says it is for the first time since 2018 that he has been without heroin injection for so long.

The doctors treating him say he is suffering from hepatitis C virus. As the police and the government agencies over the years have ensured chemists should provide syringes only on the doctor’s prescription and shouldn’t randomly give it to anyone over the counter, the addicts are facing syringe shortage and they share needles leading to hepatitis C virus.

In the Sopore area in north Kashmir, the police have given strict instructions to Chemists not to give anyone syringes without having a doctor's prescription. The doctors say it has to be seen whether the move has reduced the addiction or not. “But what we generally see among the addicts is that most of them have hepatitis C virus. Once drug addiction becomes rampant, it also spreads hepatitis C virus among the population as the addicts transmit it through syringe sharing and then it spreads in the population,” says a doctor.

According to doctors a few years ago drug addiction was mostly confined to medicinal opioids, cannabis, cocaine, and polysubstance abuse and sniffing heroin.  Now the scenario has changed. Psychiatrists in the Government Medical College Srinagar’s drug addiction Centre say they see around 130 addicts on an average in OPD on Monday and Tuesday and most of them use heroin through a needle.

Mushtaq says when he moved to Punjab to study law; unlike Kashmir, heroin was easily available in Punjab. “Here you have to visit certain places in north Kashmir and South Kashmir to get it. In Kashmir you get it through a network once you get addicted but in Punjab it is available like water. And in Punjab dealers prefer to transact with Kashmiris as they think Kashmiris are most reliable and will not create any problem,” he adds.

“In Kashmir you can get one gram of heroin for Rs 4000 but in Punjab you can get for Rs 1200. You can divide one gram of heroin into four to have doses out of it,” he adds.

Mushtaq started IV heroin from forearm and then he moved to neck, groin, feet and other parts of the body.

Mushtaq says since he started drug abuse, he has seen around seven of his drug addict friends dying of drug overdose. “One of my friends committed suicide. He had become hopeless,” Mushtaq says. “A time comes when you are sick, you don’t have money and you have a craving for drugs, and if you don't get drugs you suffer terrible pain. You also get this realisation you have ruined your life and that of your parents. It is an emotional and physical trauma. You are trapped into it and this realisation leads you to hopelessness. You feel you don’t have chances to get rid of this,” says Mushtaq, slapping his head.

Doctors say in most cases it either overdose that leads to sudden death of addicts or they commit suicide when they become hopeless. “Once you give up heroin for some time, you suffer immense physical pain. It is unbearable at times and it makes some people return to drugs. And they start realizing they are not getting well. It crushes them and they start thinking of suicide,” says a doctor. “Hopelessness kills most of the addicts,” he says.