“They took me to a rehab center and threatened that I´d be sent to jail if I refused to stay there,” he stated. At the center in Tokha-Chandeshwari, he was given brown sugar and as he sniffed, the youths took his photographs. “They showed the photographs to my family and told them that I was arrested by the police while taking drugs and staying at the center was the only way to avoid prison,” he added.[break]
According to Khadka, there are many rehab centers in and around Kathmandu that hunt for drug users with the sole motive of making money.
Profit driven de-addiction centers operate to cash in on the rising drug abuse among youths. They do not follow even the basic criteria led down by the authorities and instead of treatment and psychological motivation to end dependence on drugs, rely on torture to force addicts quit drugs.
Khadka said that more than 80 drug users were crammed into three rooms and were barred from talking to each other. Those who were found talking, were given severe punishments.
“The center was more like a torture cell than a correction center,” he said. “I was kept in a dog kennel the first week and beaten by a PVC pipe.”
If anybody drank water without permission, Khadka said, he´d be subjected to isolation and brutal beating. He was allowed to leave the center only after paying Rs 140,000 in fees for the period he stayed there.
Saradaman Joshi, a 29-year-old former drugs user from Patan Mangal Bazar, accuses a Bhainsepati based rehabilitation center of severely torturing him during his two-month stay. He was thrown out of the center four months ago after his family failed to pay exorbitant fees. “They offered neither medical treatment nor therapy to end dependence on drugs. They just resorted to torture,” Joshi said. “They treated us like a criminal who had committed some kind of heinous crime,” he added. The stay at the center did not help him quit drugs and the lack of proper treatment resulted in a relapse. Joshi is currently now on oral substitution.
Mohan Bardewa, 28, a former drugs user who went through hellish experiences at many such centers, said that most of the centers are opened by former addicts who apply the same punishment methods they themselves had faced. He claimed that such centers do not have professional counselors and do not use standard techniques to get the drug users out of addiction. “Many such centers are run by people who would have themselves stayed at a rehab for about six months,” he said.
Sanjaya Maharjan, 25, of Patan Dhoka, who was recently released from one such center, said many rehabs hire local thugs to threaten and beat the addicts. “The centers mobilize thugs to pick drug users and then blackmail their families,” he said. They mainly target only those drug users whose families can fork out huge money in the name of rehabilitation costs.
Rabindra Karki, who operates Clear Vision Nepal, the Bhainsepati based rehab center, conceded that his center that has 48 drug users has no professional therapist or other people with prior experience of treating addicts.
“We are also former drug users. We do not have academic qualification, so we don´t use medicines to treat clients,” Karki said. He denied use of torture method at his center.
Karki confessed that he sends out drug users at his center to bring in others promising treatment. “We use force only after talking to the parents of the drug users and receiving their permission,” he said, adding, “Our clients who pay Rs 15,000 per month.”
Karki also revealed that the Jawalakhel Police sends drug users to the center but denied providing commission to the police. “Police arrest addicts and call us so that they can be treated at the center,” Karki said.
More than 200 de-addiction centers operate across the country and many have sprung up in the past couple of years. The Ministry of Home Affairs is responsible for monitoring the quality of treatment at rehab centers and it has even formulated guidelines to be followed at such centers.
Under-secretary at the ministry, Bal Dev Gautam said that at the district level, a committee under chief district officer has to monitor such centers. “I am not aware about the malpractices at rehab centers. If such things are happening, we will take actions against them,” he assured.
Doctors say addiction is a kind of mental disease and can only be treated by psychologists or doctors specializing in mental health.
“They need detoxification treatment in the first phase which takes two weeks. Then should be given psychological counseling,” Dr Saroj Ojha, a mental health specialist, said. He said that keeping addicts in rehab without medical treatment and psychological counseling cannot solve the problem. "Once the recovery process is completed, they should be given life-skills training to help them with social integration and leading a normal life."
Related story
Rehabs milking families of addicts
