Home | Community | Message Board

MRCA Tyroler Gluckspilze
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Kraken Kratom Kratom Capsules for Sale

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleSimplepowa
In Pursuit of Knowledge


Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 4,310
Nyaope, the street drug that's the scourge of South Africa's townships
    #19066395 - 10/31/13 09:44 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Mpho was a bored teenager growing up in the bleak sprawl of big city Johannesburg, with few opportunities and little to do for fun.

When a friend offered her “nyaope,” she didn’t say no.

“I wanted to feel happy,” she said, recounting her first experience smoking the cocktail drug. “And I felt so happy and so high — I had never had felt such a thing before.”

Nyaope, also called "whoonga," is the street drug that is ravaging South Africa’s impoverished townships. Cheap and highly addictive, it is said to include marijuana, low-grade heroin and other additives like rat poison and antiretrovirals, which are used to treat HIV.

The details of nyaope are local, but the story has become universal. Nasty, low-cost cocktail drugs are a growing problem in many parts of the world. “Krokodil” — a mix of codeine and gasoline, so named for the flesh-destroying skin condition it causes — is reported to have recently spread from Eastern Europe into the United States.

In South Africa, nyaope is popular among lower income groups in the townships surrounding Johannesburg and Pretoria, areas already facing high unemployment and poverty. Nyaope only emerged in the last six or seven years but is widely available, costing just 30 rand ($3) for a hit.

The drug has drawn national attention here in South Africa. President Jacob Zuma warned earlier this year that the nation's young are becoming “slaves of drugs such as nyaope,” contributing to increased crime and domestic violence.

He's not wrong.

After trying nyaope in high school, Mpho quickly became addicted and fell into a cycle of stealing and selling her body to make money to buy the drug. For about three years Mpho lived with her dealers, who pimped her out to customers.

“Nyaope, if you’re a girl, can lead to many things,” she said. “You will do things that you never thought you would do.”

Cathy Vos, coordinator of the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (SANCA), said that use of nyaope is already an enormous problem, and only getting worse.

One SANCA-run rehab clinic, in Vereeniging near Johannesburg, reported 63 people undergoing treatment for nyaope addiction in April. In June there were 134 people, while in August, 223 people sought assistance.

“It is increasing tremendously,” Vos said.

Vos said the rapid growth in nyaope use has left SANCA — a non-profit organization that receives funding from the South African government — with too few resources to address the problem.

There are waiting lists for treatment programs, and shortages of medicine to help with withdrawal symptoms.

“Many of our patients are HIV positive, so you will have an HIV-positive person who has not been diagnosed or treated and is now using nyaope and his health deteriorates very past,” Vos said.

“Because of their poor health, in the withdrawal stage, they really suffer.”

Unlicensed rehabilitation centers are mushrooming in the area around Johannesburg to meet the demand from families desperate for help.

The provincial minister of social development has described these illegal clinics as a threat to drug addicts, rather than a help. At some clinics investigated by the ministry, patients were confined to small rooms without access to professional care, and were even used for hard labor.

Mpho, who is now 23, is about to complete six weeks of rehab at the respected Horizon Clinic in Boksburg, near Johannesburg.

Like other patients there, she asked for her privacy to be protected. A petite, confident young woman, Mpho said she underwent treatment in order to “live a normal life” for her 2-year-old daughter.

“I’m relieved, happy, excited. Scared to face the world. But I will fight,” she said.

Sipho, 17, who is also in rehab at the Horizon Clinic, said he started smoking nyaope a year ago after a friend offered him a joint.

Within months he had quit high school and felt such terrible withdrawal symptoms that he began stealing from people in the community to finance his habit.

When his neighbors caught him stealing, they would beat him in public.

“They were cruel,” he said. “My mouth was bleeding so much I couldn’t eat. I hurt all over.”

When Sipho leaves the clinic, he will move in with an aunt in a different area, to get away from his old friends.

“I am so nervous about going home,” he said.

Erin Conway-Smith
GlobalPost
October 31, 2013
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/south-africa/131030/nyaope-street-drug-south-africa


--------------------
Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

---

Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

---

Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Kraken Kratom Kratom Capsules for Sale


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Drug Abuse And Crime: Siamese Twins? AnnoA 2,004 0 03/13/04 12:41 AM
by Anno
* No More Jail Terms for Drug Possession (Russia) luvdemshrooms 3,694 12 05/20/04 02:23 PM
by grib
* UC Berkeley students arrested in drug raid after UCB senior's mysterious death daba 7,585 13 11/09/04 05:00 PM
by Middleman
* South for the Marijuana motamanM 1,977 2 09/07/03 02:27 PM
by Hans_Moleman
* South County Survey details drug use by teens AnnoA 1,152 0 11/07/04 10:34 AM
by Anno
* Winning the War on Drugs MikeOLogical 3,524 15 08/03/04 01:34 PM
by acoostick
* Portugal Decriminalizes Drug Use!!!! GGreatOne234 7,097 5 06/18/15 08:08 PM
by Learyfan
* Arizona/ Maine Drug Pipeline part II Penguin 9,161 3 11/05/02 03:31 PM
by Penguin

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
486 topic views. 0 members, 9 guests and 6 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.017 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 13 queries.