Once addicts, they are now high on life

NEW DELHI: For a raw girl of 13, Reema has taken the extraordinarily mature decision to turn her life around. The teenaged ragpicker has seen girls her age and older succumb to substance abuse, and is fighting to give up her addiction to whitening solution, which she gets for Rs 60 from predatory drug peddlers lurking in the vicinity of Hanuman Mandir in Connaught Place.She has already spent a tough week at the first de-addiction shelter for homeless women set up by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board in Pardah Bagh in old Delhi, and has realised the road to freedom is not easy.
Reema’s fight underscores the negligence that has marked de-addiction efforts, in which the focus has always been on men rather than women. That is why the shelter for women and girls in Pardah Bagh is important: it recognises that women have become targets for drug sellers and are prone to the resultant violence and sexual harassment.
The de-addiction centre is run by voluntary organisation Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses (SPYM), which also has similar facilities for homeless men in Kotla Mubarakpur and for street children and runaways in Delhi Gate. Another centre for men is expected to open soon in Dakshinpuri.
It has just been a week now at the facility where 20 women are trying to wean themselves away from their poison. When TOI visited the centre, an attendant was patiently assisting 38-year-old Saira deal with withdrawal symptoms. Saira picked up the habit from her smack-addicted husband, and frustratingly for her, even her sons are hooked now. “A pouch of smack costs Rs 200,” she said. “I would spend everything I earned through begging and ragpicking on smack.”
Her daughter convinced her to seek help at the centre, and three days without her daily quota of the low-quality heroin has made her realise that she needs an iron resolve if she is to get rid of her addiction.
A 25-year-old who sells balloons and flowers at Hanuman Mandir told of the hardships that drove her to smack. A native of Sholapur in Maharashtra, the woman was forced to leave her village by the family after their crops failed. She came to Delhi and started living in a slum, but landed on the streets when the area was cleared for redevelopment. With her husband in jail, the tensions of life forced the homeless woman to depend on opiates for relief.
SPYM’s Nitesh Kumar disclosed that the number of women seeking ways out of substance abuse was big, and this first shelter was only a beginning. “The deaddiction plan involves a three-month stay for a patient, during which she will be examined by a doctor and monitored by an attendant for withdrawal symptoms,” said Kumar. “The daily routine includes counselling sessions and the engagement of the women in various activities to divert their attention from drugs. The process also involves sessions where family members and others from the community in which they live are invited here to boost the confidence of the patient and assure her she will be reintegrated with her environment after three to six months.”
The voluntary organisation has tied up with GB Pant Hospital for the initial screening and check-up of patients, and if required, for admission in cases of severe withdrawal symptoms. SPYM is also reaching out to the Delhi Commission for Women and NGOs to identify women on the streets who may need assistance.
In June, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had expressed concern at the problem of drugs in the capital’s streets. During consultations with stakeholders on the creation of 52 model slums that would steer a larger reform in the capital’s 675-odd slums, Sisodia had promised DUSIB and participants from the voluntary sector that they would get “requisite support from all government departments concerned in fighting the problem of drugs”.