Drug Addicts

             Being a student myself, I interact mostly with the youth of Karachi. Observing their current activities and interests brought many questions in my mind. The habits of a lot of students came rather as a shock than news to me which arouse the curiosity inside me to know about what was happening.

            These days, a lot of youngsters are involved in taking drugs. As a matter of fact, even girls are involved in it. The youth involved in these habits differ from the ones who are not. After conducting a research I got to know that the part of youngsters taking drugs couldn’t concentrate on other things without having it, had severe mood swings as a consequence and could go to any extent to have drugs. Trying to find some facts before knowing more I found out that usually these people do drugs more than twice a day.

            As I wanted to know why these people were willing to destroy their lives by being involved in such an activity, I decided to ask them about it. “I do it because it’s very hard for me to avoid my friends who are addicts”, one of the boys said. This made clear to me that to some extent peer pressure was one of the reasons for them to do it.

            While going deeper into the topic I found out more interesting things. One of the girls told me that nobody from her family understood her and her friends showed their backs to her which brought her to this point years ago. When asked if she plans to leave it at some point of time she replied “I can’t think of quitting it now, it’s a part of my life”. So I figured out that family issues can come under the banner of the reasons too.

            After going to more and more people I found out that some addicts thought they have it because it was easily available to them, according to few it made them happy when they were sad, while some said that they felt lonely and drug was their only friend.

            The reasons given by the addicts could not justify their habits to me. However, only one statement from an addict made some sense to me. He said “When I was in my teens I had migraine. I was prescribed by my doctor to have injections and now I can’t survive without it because I am addicted to it. Young age is the age of power and control and life is to be lived once. I didn’t have an option to choose from that’s why I ended up being in this situation, blaming life and surroundings can never justify an addict”.