Hugo Mora, a patient with addiction, speaks with doctor Luis Suárez in the detoxification area of a Guayaquil hospital January 6. MARCO’S PIN (AFP)
“It all started when I started school, my friend told me this is H, it will do you good,” Pablo recounts his first experience with heroin, which they call H, the most dangerous drug circulating on the streets of Guayaquil , in Ecuador. It is highly addictive and so cheap that it can easily be sold in schools. It is consumed by children from 12 years of age. Pablo was 15 when he tried it “out of curiosity”. “They didn’t force me and I was fine, although I felt nauseous and dizzy the first time.” Two years have passed since then and the addiction escalated until he dropped out of school and home. Now he wanders the streets selling anything that will allow him to buy the daily dose for a few dollars.
He looks malnourished, his face emaciated, like someone who only sleeps a few hours. His hands are frozen and he repeatedly rubs them on his pants. “I have three hours without consumption,” he says, explaining the cold he feels in a city where it’s always hot. You have withdrawal symptoms.
The H has a base of heroin mixed with amphetamines, construction cement, paint scraped off the walls, and even small doses of rat poison have been found. The mix alternates between dealers. A 1-gram H case sells for $1.25 on the street, and for the average consumer, that amount only lasts a few hours. “The drug, while cheaper, is more toxic and therefore more harmful,” says Rómulo Bermeo, an addiction doctor who works with the Drug Prevention Commission of the Guayas College of Physicians.
Bermeo makes many visits to places where H users are known to congregate, trying to convince them to go on a detox regimen. “I explain to them that we will not admit them to a clinic, that it can be an outpatient clinic,” he explains.
Among the neighborhoods it passes through is the Suburbio, one of the most populated in Guayaquil, where the hacheritos, as consumers call them, roam around like zombies selling bottled water or candy. You buy from merchants at any time of the day. You open the case, dip your finger in the powder and inhale. They take their water bottles and walk slowly. Nobody tells them anything. “They used to be wary of being seen as consuming, but not now. Even on the bus they use up and you just don’t have to look,” says Rocío, a resident of the industry.
In the suburbs, drug micro-trafficking networks have made good use of the vulnerabilities of populations surviving on informal trade, street sales and precarious services. dr Bermeo frequents H Street, which they have dubbed the Drug Mall, several days a week. In this block you can get all sorts of stuff – cocaine, marijuana, plop plop, cripy and H – for just a few bucks.
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Drug and alcohol use is a public health problem that is increasing among youth and is difficult to measure with data. The statistics are scattered, as are the projects to solve them. The Municipality of Guayaquil has managed to obtain a figure: 248,000 patients treated in almost four years by the medical brigades visiting different neighborhoods, 25% of which they say can continue rehabilitation. The others fall behind.
The treatment offered to them consists of psychological care and medication to manage the withdrawal symptoms, or “the monkey,” which begins just a few hours after not consuming H.
“A few days is enough for a young person to consume this drug to experience chronic symptoms such as insomnia, irritability, sadness or melancholy,” explains Bermeo, but what causes an immediate addiction counts unlike other drugs. It’s common and muscle pain. “The pain is unbearable and this forces them to start taking medication again within a few hours,” adds the doctor, who has studied the evolution of patients that the combination of toxic substances contained in H damage the lungs, which Seriously damages liver and kidneys. “Those who have died do not do so from an overdose, but from the chronic damage the drug causes to the body, particularly the lungs,” he says.
“It’s the famous heroine who takes the pain away from us,” says Luis, 16. “It’s momentary, then I’ll need it again. One inhalation lasts two to three hours in my body,” warns the young man, who was supposed to be going to school but dropped out to devote himself to micro-commerce. According to a 2020 survey of more than 2,000 students between the ages of 12 and 17 in Guayaquil, 60% agreed that it was easy to get drugs, and 57% of their friends were already users.
“The problem with drugs is determining why young people use them,” says Bermeo. His patients give him three reasons: “Curiosity, peer pressure and, in the vast majority of cases, problems at home because they come from dysfunctional homes.” For this diagnosis, the country’s treatment must be prevention, which is not only solved with discussions in schools, the only strategy currently in place to prevent children from becoming addicted.
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