The path to drug addiction starts with experimentation. You or your loved one may have tried drugs out of curiosity, because friends were doing it, or in an effort to erase another problem. At first, the substance seems to solve the problem or make life better, so you use the drug more and more. But as the addiction progresses, getting and using the drug becomes more and more important and your ability to stop using is compromised. What begins as a voluntary choice turns into a physical and psychological need. The good news is that drug addiction is treatable.
A disturbing fact is that addicts are getting hooked earlier. The mean age of initial heroin use, according to the last National Drug Abuse Survey (2002-03), has fallen to 22 from 26. Second, more women are using and the country refuses to take seriously the social factors that contribute to this degeneration picture. Drug addiction can start in school. Girls at one private institution used hashish in the restroom while a reporter was there. A headmistress of one girls’ college in Lahore expelled a group of her students for possessing and using narcotics on the premises.
“The problem of drug addiction among women cannot be separated from other aspects of their social conditioning … such as racism, sexism and poverty … that are essential to understanding drug abuse in women,” said Tasneem Nazir a clinical psychologist at Lahore’s Mayo Hospital. She said teenage girls are likely to abuse substances in order to lose weight, relieve stress or boredom, improve their mood, reduce sexual inhibitions, self-medicate depression and increase confidence. Women who seek treatment for alcohol and drug problems report a connection among family violence, childhood abuse, and substance abuse. The way to remedy the problem is to address violence and sexual abuse, unsafe housing, unemployment, stereotyping of sexual roles, and the lack of health care and child care, all of which contribute to the depression and hopelessness linked to substance abuse by women.
It is important for women to have the knowledge and skills to be a positive force in confronting this problem, especially in drug prevention. Society’s view on addiction also needs to change, according to concerned observers. The barriers to treatment for women must be addressed because most programmers are based on male-oriented models that are not geared to the needs of women. The need of the time is programmed must be designed to overcome the current barriers to women’s access to and participation in treatment.
AMIR FEROZ
Lahore
