‘Young people are dying’: Synthetic drug ‘kush’ ravages Sierra Leone’s young

A nation is struggling as a new drug leaves its young users living as “zombies” with no-one to care for them.

A man sleeps inside a drug den at the Kington landfill site in Freetown on June 21, 2023. Picture: John Wessels / AFP

An African nation is losing the battle against a new drug, leaving its young users as “zombies” in a system unfit to care for them.

Their lives are mired in poverty and despair. “Kush” offers them relief, but the nirvana is fleeting and carries a grim price.

The recently-emerged drug is making terrible inroads among the young in Sierra Leone, a West African nation ranked among the world’s poorest.

On the edge of a rubbish tip in the capital Freetown, Mohamed*, a 25-year-old garbage picker, smoked a joint laced with kush.

He said he would “meditate high meditation,” sleep, wake up and eat for about an hour.

And then, a short time later, do it all over again.

“We smoke it the whole day,” he said.

“I spend a lot of money on it every day — around (A$0.37),” a small fortune in a country with average per capita income of under A$752 a year.

A man rolls Kush inside a drug den at the Kington landfill site in Freetown on June 21, 2023. Picture: John Wessels / AFP

Nearby, Mohamed’s companions were crammed into a shack shrouded in kush smoke in the heart of a slum where children played among pigs and detritus.

The synthetically-made drug surfaced about six years ago, although its composition is sketchy.

Manufactured and distributed by criminal gangs, “the drug is an amalgamation of the various chemicals and plants that mimic the natural (cannabinoid) THC found in cannabis,” said Abdul Sheku Kargbo, head of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.

He said that the active ingredient’s concentration can be “exponentially increased,” ratcheting up potency.

At only 25 US cents a dose, the drug is addicting users. Picture: John Wessels / AFP

“Young people are dying,” said Ibrahim Hassan Koroma, founder of an NGO called the Mental Watch Advocacy Network. Kush users seem everywhere in Freetown, from the slums to well-heeled areas, slumped with their heads lolling and sometimes sleeping standing up.

Sex work

Kadiatu, 22, is among those who became hooked on the drug.

“Sometimes when I wake up from sleep without smoking, my body and joints ache,” she said.

“After I smoke two, three (joints), I feel okay, I feel alright, my meditation changes, my mood becomes cool. After smoking, I eat a lot,” she said.

To pay for her hits, she resorts to sex work.

In recent years Kush, a mix of various chemicals and plants that mimic the natural properties found in cannabis, according to the National Drug Agency, is increasingly being used by youth in Sierra Leone. Picture: John Wessels / AFP

She bore scars from knife attacks and, she admitted, psychic wounds.

“I used to be a cheerful woman with so many fashion dresses,” she said. “(...) Look at the hair on my head- I don’t plait my hair (anymore).”

Koroma walked through the poor district of Crab Town, paying an outreach visit to a “hide-out” where maybe a hundred kush users were inside, discreetly smoking joints.

The root cause of their addiction was poverty and neglect, he said. “We don’t want to discriminate them or to point fingers at them, that’s stigmatisation.

“We need a speedy and refocused strategy,” he said. “(...) At the moment, it is quite alarming.”

One hospital

Sierra Leone’s sole psychiatric hospital, a renovated facility from the British colonial era, is swamped with young addicts brought in by families desperate for help.

Just Mattia, acting medical superintendent and resident psychiatrist, says sixty per cent of the hospital’s admissions are kush-related.

In the substance abuse unit, dozens of patients lay on beds.

The hospital “receives patients that are at the extreme end – they are intoxicated, or they are psychotic,” he said.

Care amounts to isolation treatment lasting between three to six weeks, supported by antipsychotic drugs to help wean patients off their addiction.

They can have psychotherapy and join socialising activities such as sports and sewing.

Recovering Kush addicts sit on their beds at the Kissy Mental Hospital in Freetown on June 22, 2023. Picture: John Wessels / AFP

Michael Mannah, a 22-year-old student, said his life had been transformed after years on kush.

“I was the bad Michael, not the good Michael that I am now,” he said, speaking in one of the dormitories.

“I felt like I was in another world, different from this one,” he said. “’Abstain from kush’, it’s the best advice I have.”

Despite his triumphant tone, the facility has limited human resources to provide follow-up treatment, and relapses are common.

A man sleeps inside a drug den at the Kington landfill site in Freetown. Picture: John Wessels / AFP

Its budget is so tight that a US NGO called Partners in Help pays for drugs, rehabilitation programs and staff training.

But many kush addicts have no access to treatment whatsoever – if they are harmless, they are left alone, living as “zombies” but with no one to care for them, said Superintendent Mattia.

The hospital can only treat “the tip of an iceberg,” he said.

“It’s a very big and widespread problem.”

-With AFP

Originally published as ‘Young people are dying’: Synthetic drug ‘kush’ ravages Sierra Leone’s young