A MEANS TO STAND THE REALITY

Drug Addiction as an Epidemic

AIM, Belgrade

In early fifties, children from good families were threatened that, if they were not obedient, they would meet the destiny of Bakarusa, a fatally beautiful woman from Bijelo Polje, who travelled across Europe with dubious guys, drugged with opium tincture. As a "pioneer" drug addict, she became a heroine of a novel, and then ended up in the local cemetary.

In late sixties, in a cellar of No. 27, Roosevelt Street in Belgrade, the first victim of an overdose, Menzanin, died. At the time, Belgrade was still just a transit post for drugs, it knew only for opium, and the few drug addicts, Vampir, Zuca and Suja, used to buy it in front of the "Slavija" Hotel. Heroin, the angel powder, was just becoming fashionable, seeking its way from Pakistan and Turkey, through Belgrade towards Europe, sold in very small quantites here, just to pay for the expenses of the narco-dealers. During mid-eighties, the few Belgrade heroin addicts brought cartons of cigarettes "stuffed" with heroin, for their own needs and just a little more to make some money on it. At the time, the Pakistanese just began conquering Belgrade, selling a gram for 200 German marks. And yet, drugs still had a taste of exclusiveness and attraction. "Heaven riders", people addicted to heroin, whose slogan was "let us die young and beautiful", thought of themselves as the inheritors of the hippy movement, as being special, creative, above the futile socialist realistic existence. Hashish and marijuana were brought by children of diplomats into high school classrooms, as a status symbol.

A Rolex, A Pager and Marijouana

Nowadays, Belgrade shares the destiny of Moscow. According to the offer and the low prices, experts agree, these two cities are world recorders. Experts assess that Serbia is facing an epidemic of non-infectious type. According to the data collected by Belgrade police, since the beginning of the year, 27 persons died due to an overdose of drugs, but this figure is believed to be larger, if those who died of various infections as results of taking drugs are taken into account. According to what Dr. Milutin Nenadovic, the head of the Institute for Treatment of Addiction Diseases says, there are 20 thousand drug addicts in Belgrade, and 30 thousand in Serbia. The coming years terrify. Drug addiction is not characteristic only for Belgrade. As a Belgrade daily, the NIN, reports, not long ago, a nineteen year old boy died of an overdose in Obrenovac, a small town near Belgrade, and it is believed that there are about 400 drug addicts there. The illusion about drug addiction as the misfortune of the rich has vanished as a soap-bubble. University professors, members of the upstarts born by the war, or children from poverty-stricken labourers' suburbs also resort to drugs.

• It has become stylish in the business world to wear a Boss suit, a Rolex watch on the wrist, a pager, and several cigarettes of marijouana in the pocket - a forty-year-old economist V.P. says. - People take dope in discotheques, restaurants, during business dinners. It is not an exclusive, as it used to be, but an everyday entertainment. People raise marijouana on their balconies as a home plant. Along the two-hundred-meter distance between restaurant "Majestic" and cafe "At the horse's", you can buy grass in five places at least, and there is always some at the "Greek Queen" restaurant. Selling of grass resembles nowadays the regular selling of smuggled TV sets, cigarettes or petrol.

Our interlocutor was seventeen when he started with the needle, took a "fix" about ten times, for the last time twenty years ago, when he almost died. After that, he occassionally smokes grass, with no passion, just when someone offers him some. His comrades from those times, have long been dead.

• I have not sworn that I would never do it again. I"m simply not the type to be an addict. I believe that the addict type bears fundamental insecurity and emotional hunger inside. The question is only what such a person will choose - food, alcohol, another person, or drugs - he adds.

And emotional hunger and absolute insecurity have been abundant in this space in the past years. The sanctions and the war have brought about a true drug-addiction "boom". The road from the East is now interrupted in Belgrade. Many believe that even some members of the UNPROFOR who are located on the borders of our country are in the business, because a drug deal guarantees a profit which is hard to resist.

A gram of heroin can be bought for 25 German marks in Belgrade, professor Nenadovic says, referring to the claims of his patients, and this quantity satisfies the needs of four days (the average price in the European market is about 200 marks per gram). The price of a gram of hashish does not exceed ten marks in Belgrade, and marijouana can be bought for three. The Yugoslav law which regulates the drug trade is one of the most liberal in the world. Possession of drugs is punished by 60 days in prison. There is a saying among narco-dealers from the East saying: "If Allah wishes me to "fall", let it be in Yugoslavia".

The grown drug-addict population split into various layers. The group addicted to cocaine has separated, consisting of the members of the Serbian "new class" who can pay as much as 200 marks for a gram of the white powder. They have enough money to pay a visit to Los Angeles afterwards, where a plastic surgeon of Yugoslav origin has become famous for operating the mucuous membrane of the nose. It is well-known that the natural road of cocaine never crossed Yugoslavia, so that its presence here shows that Belgrade has become an interesting market for it.

Cannabis, marijouana and hashish have entered classrooms. While the newspapers report about children's games with glue, varnish and sprays, the data the Institute for Treatment of Addiction Diseases has acquired, speak of a completely different thing.

• Marijouana is so expanding that it is used even by children in the fifth or sixth grade of elementary school. In the past two months, two thirds of our night interventions, in emergency cases, had to do with marijouana poisoning in a hallucinattory syndrome. The number of those poisoned by marijouana is much larger than of those poisoned by opiates, and cannabis addiction is moving towards the age group of ten. Once, people became heroin addicts when they were 20 or 25, now this limit has moved down towards adolescence, the age groups of fourteen and fifteen. We still speak about "light" and "heavy" drugs around here, although I do not make this distinction - Dr. Nenadovic says. - A drug addict, regardless of the drug he/she uses, after five to ten years already suffers of serious tissue defects, so that global dementia or senility is encountered even among people of twenty.

"Nothing can help me"

A large group of drug addicts "created" by doctors also roams the streets of Belgrade nowadays. They are ex-heroin addicts treated with methadone who have thus become addicts of this synthetic and dangerous drug. When the mentioned Institute was founded seven years ago, mass treatment with methadone began, and soon it turned out that this was just as successful as treatment of an alcoholic would be if the doctor prescribed him two bottles of vodka a day, and forbade him to enter a bar. The experience shows that noone managed to be cured in this way. Out of the 500 drug addicts treated in the Institute so far, 200 have died. Practically, only those who are addicted to methadone use doctors' services. And while a man addicted to heroin sometimes makes natural interruptions, methadone must be taken regularly.

• They were poisoned daily with large doses, now we are trying to get them off methadone, and this is much harder. For the first time since January this year, the newly arrived addicts, and there are 160 of them, are not offered methadone. Out of the 280 methadone addicts, 232 are HIV infected. When the Institute began work, the virus was detected in 20 per cent of cases, and now in 80 - Professor Nenadovic summarizes this medical failure. He attempts to verify the change in the operation of neurons in the brains of young generation in his physiological reserach. The results induce him to believe that the causes of addiction should not be sought only in the disintegration of the family and disinterested society, but much more profoundly - in biochemical disorders of the brain.

If once drug addicts had a feeling of being special, nowadays, an average drug addict does not even try to be Jimmy Hendix or Janice Joplin. Hopeless, with no clear objective, he/she abandons school or his/her job, sleeps during the day, "enjoys" at night. And moves from robbery to robbery in order to provide a "fix".

According to the data collected since January this year in the Department for fighting smuggling and drug addiction of the Belgrade Secretariat of the Interior, among 276 indicted grown-ups, there were 26 addicts, and among 142 juvenile delinquents, there were 24 drug addicts. In the group of 28 persons under age - perpetrators of complex criminal acts, there were 18 drug addicts. Since the beginning of the year, workers of the Secretariat (and the NIN reports that only 4 policemen are engaged in fighting drugs in Belgrade) have confiscated about five kilograms og heroine, 85 grams of cocaine, a kilo and a half of hashish and 50 kilos of marijouana, and minor quantities of LSD and other synthectic drugs.

When the war broke out, a whole army of Belgrade drug addicts who had already had records of criminal offences, hurried to the front.

• They emphasized their patriotism, as volunteers, but having returned, they claimed that they were disappointed, that their comrades have deceived them and that they had expected an abundance of drugs. But, judging by their stories, there was a lot of trading and stealing at the front. Now they admit that they have no more reason to go to the front, because the drugs have reached Belgrade - Professor Nenadovic says.

Finally, it would be unjust not to mention numerous drug addicts - warriors originated at the front. Drugs became a necessity for them, as a means to survive the reality. A man who has spent two and a half years at the front, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia, now has tics, he twitches, thinks that everyone is persecuting him. He says: "I've tried everything- alcohol, LSD and "coce". In the beginning it relaxed me, now not even that can pacify me."

Gordana Igric