addiction

Opium smoker in Laos

A short film detailing the opium career of a Laotian addict, from its tragically motivated inception to her equally sad desperation at being trapped within her addiction.

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This video is an animation of an experiment conducted in the late 1970s by Canadian Psychologist Bruce Alexander and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University. The experiment aimed to show the effect environment has on drug use and to discard the hypotheses that the drug itself was the sole cause of addiction. Alexander built a rat colony (Rat Park), which was 200 times the size of a normal laboratory cage, which housed between 16 - 20 rats of both sexes.

Heroin's double side

I remember very well when my father found out that I smoked and told my mother that nothing will prevent me from getting into drugs because I had already discovered the most dreadful vice. Perhaps my father was right because when a couple of years later searching in my pockets one night, he found a packet of Rizla he claimed that I was on my way to perdition and that nothing absolutely nothing will stop me from becoming a heroin addict.

Addict's rise to fame in Greece's latest video viral

Andreas, an unemployed addict from the city of Pyrgos in the Peloponnese has rapidly risen to fame in the past few months after an interview with a TV channel was broadcast locally and then uploaded on YouTube.

Delivered with an unmistakeable addict's swagger the dialogue between Andreas and the reporter goes as follows:

Are drug users lost souls?

Are drug users criminals, bad people, nice people, scum or just lost souls?

Methadone treatment in Macedonia and all problems which we are facing with it.

Submitted by Vito on Thu, 11/02/2010 - 15:14

My name is Georgievski Vitomir but most of the people know me as Vito. I want to say that I am drug user activist and this days I am working for two NGO’s in Macedonia, one which is dealing with problems that methadone patients have and the second one which is drug users union we are trying through direct action to change something in the drug users area. Currently I am also a board member of INPUD and I am general secretary of the same organization.

Mother of four speaks out on crack use whilst pregnant

Mary Barr, a mother of four from Ney York City, tells the story of her addiction to cocaine and crack, which she consumed regularly during her four pregnancies. Mary explains that, as she was seeking for help to quit her habit, she realized how difficult it could be for a woman and a mother with a drug problem to find the help she needed for herself and her children. Preconceived notions, she claims, were one of the obstacles she encountered. Hence the importance of understanding the issue of gender-related drug use.

Afghani women addicted to heroin

The first ever drug rehabilitation clinic for women has been opened in Afghanistan to help women and young girls who have become opium and heroine addicts.

‘You have no pain when u smoke it’ is what a woman says, whilst a 12 year old girl, already an addict, declares to have started when she was little, smoking what her mother left after she had smoked in the first place. According to the video there are 920,000 drug addicts in Afghanistan, 13 % of which are women (7% of these are girls under 16 years of age).

Prostitution and crack in the Bronx

“The Yard Blues” is a documentary on prostitution, crack, motherhood and survival. The stories gathered in this reportage describe one specific link between gender, sex and drugs. Women, who throughout their lives develop a drug addiction and a homeless lifestyle, turn to prostitution to pay for their habit. At times they can’t even justify this choice to themselves.

The new book by Greg Salmon on the intricate story behind Afghan poppy cultivation

The new book by Gregor Salmon is called “Poppy” and it is journey in Afghanistan trying to clarify the intricate story behind the largest opium producer in the world.

The financial and economic system of Afghanistan is principally sustained by poppy cultivation, which gives enough income for the majority of the Afghan population to buy food, clothes, and pay for access to education and health care.