They lie in dirt, unaware of what is going on around them. Some have bleeding arms, others bleeding legs. Many have wounds which are dry but they have not cleaned them for days. Their eyes, which stare into the vast unknown, have a haunting look about them.
The spot where they gather is known by the locals as Paradise Point, but except for the name, there is nothing heavenly about this place.
This area on the outskirts of Karachi, the fifth largest city in the world, inhabits majority of the estimated 750,000 heroin addicts in Pakistan. Paradise Point is actually a garbage dump site where heroin addicts come to inject, snort and smoke heroin, depending on what works for the addict and perhaps, find some solace.
It is one of the many such spots in this sprawling city of 20 million. A drive in Karachi shows that the menace of drug addiction is fast increasing with addicts dwelling on streets all around, finding whatever shelter they can. Sometimes it is under a bridge, and at other times, at such dump sites where no-one bothers them.
Hassan Baloch, a heroin addict, lives under one such bridge near the Paradise Point garbage site, which he often frequents, too.
“I moved out of home last year. I could not take the heat from my family. I knew living out on the road, I will be free to do whatever I want, whenever I want,” Baloch says.
One look at an unkempt Baloch reflects how he spends his day. His clothes have not been washed for days, his eyes weary, and lost. With an unshaven face, he keeps scratching himself, agitated for the next dose.
Baloch got addicted almost eight years ago when a friend introduced him to the drug in a sitting. He says he used to smoke cannabis, until his friends told him about a ‘better drug’ — and he says without knowing what it was that he was experimenting with, he started smoking heroin. The friend who introduced it to him was a peddler and user, who turned his friends into clients.
“When my family first found out, they took me to a rehabilitation centre. I went cold turkey, but as soon as I returned, I got no support at home and ended up hanging out with the same friends who were hanging on to heroin. Soon I was smoking again,” Baloch says, who now injects the drug.
Pakistan Society, a local NGO, works in the area where these drug addicts gather, and provides them medical care, free syringes to prevent the spread of HIV and sometimes takes them back to a rehab centre run by the organization.
Dr. Saleem Azam, the man behind the initiative, has been working in this field for the last two decades. “Rehabilitation is a tough process because when they leave the centre, most of them end up back on heroin. It is the supply that needs to end and the family support that needs to improve, if we want to help these patients. They are mentally unwell and they need to be treated sensitively. Otherwise, they can be easily pushed back to their old ways,” Dr. Azam says.
Baloch is a living example of the doctor’s fears. In the last eight years, Baloch has been to rehab three times but has failed to let go off the habit.
“It is ruining my life but what can I do? I have tried to let go off it but no-one wants to associate with me when I come back, and it forces me back to only those who accept me — my heroin-addict partners,” he says.
Sitting restlessly throughout the interview, after fifteen minutes or so, he says he needs to go inject himself with a dose of heroin that costs him around Rs120-150. The process to procure it is quite easy, he says, since a drug peddler comes and visits their under-the-bridge abode every day.
“I do not know where it comes from, but there are areas I can take you to, where the drug dens exist,” he says. Baloch does not buy from the big dealers. He gets smaller quantities since he does not have the money to afford more.
A visit to the area proves dangerous and locals advise not to go inside the neighborhood that has looks like a labyrinth of small houses and narrow streets. “The drug kingpins operating here can kill anyone trying to interfere,” warns one local.
According to them, the police know about the sellers but refuse to take action. “They take money from them, so why will they act against them,” another local counters.
Baloch has a small paper bag which contains the deadly powder, enough for two to three hits, which he empties into a plastic bottle cap, adding water and heating it on a small flame. He then draws the mix into a syringe, looks for a vein thick enough to insert the needle in, and injects himself. Moments later he is in a different world.
What he says next is gibberish but he is content now. “I feel so good when it is inside me. It makes me forget how my family has abandoned me,” he says and then suddenly gets teary eyed. The drug has affected his emotional senses, and he starts to cry. But just then he is lost again, gazing aimlessly and talking to himself.
Leaving Baloch in a high, a visit to the centre where Baloch was put under rehabilitation proves why rehab is a temporary solution for a problem that can become lifelong and even life threatening.
The rehabilitation centre is a depressing picture of the situation. It has a big hall where the former addicts sleep on the floor with their belongings kept in a locker next to the hall. The walls around this area are painted with messages that talk of change and hope. But despite the poor condition, some here are permanent members.
“I do not want to leave because if I do, I know I will be back on heroin,” says Ghulam Sabir, who has been living at the centre since 2001, with a few breaks in the middle and was recently appointed as a clerical staff.
“I did rehab over three to four times before this. I would come here, go on a ten-day detoxification, but when I would go home, I would be back on the drug in no time,” Sabir says.
Sabir’s family kicked him out in the mid-1990s. For the next five years, he lived on the road. “They blamed me for my parents’ death. My siblings said I will never change so they wanted me to leave. I found life on the road as the only shelter and started peddling heroin to make money for my dose,” he says.
But in 2001, he met Dr. Azam who was in the field meeting with addicts. “The doctor spoke to me with a lot of love and brought me back here, and when I left once in the middle, I was back on heroin, and that is when I realized that if I leave this place, I will get hooked again,” Sabir adds.
Dr. Azam says the majority of heroin addicts have been unsuccessful in letting go of the habit like the ones at his rehab centre who, whenever they have left the centre, have returned worse off, but there are few like Najma Ali who have got a handle on their lives.
Ali was on heroin for 26 years of his life, but quit around six years ago after testing positive for HIV. He does not even remember how he got afflicted but says it was bound to happen thanks to the unsafe syringe usage. Medical experts say the majority of heroin addicts end up becoming HIV positive when they become drug injecting users.
Ali now works for a humanitarian organization that helps HIV patients get their lives back. According to him, the only thing that made him quit his habit that lasted more than two decades is going away from Karachi for a six-month rehab.
“I was on the road for more than eight years. Living on the footpath, one day an old friend met me who used to inject heroine with me. He suggested about this centre which was far away from the city,” he says.
And six months later he was homebound, but his family refused to take him back. A depressed Ali was contemplating going back to life on the road when he was offered a clerical job at an NGO working with drug addicts.
“They are the only ones that are helping us get back on track and they are the only ones there for us when we come back,” he says, adding that if it was not for the job, he would have gone back to Square One.
For him, going cold turkey was not an issue. He says he does not even remember the number of times he went for detoxification but until there was no-one to support his clean act, he was unable to get rid of the habit that consumed half his life.
But for this past addict there was a happy ending to the ordeal.
His family eventually came around to taking him back and he has been living with them happily for the last two years.
The writer is a freelance journalist with an eye for human interest stories.
