‘Kush destroys them’: the Guinean rehab clinic tackling a drug epidemic

At Guinea’s lone backstage cause rehabilitation clinic, Dr Marie Koumbassa and her 15-person squad are truthful convinced that cause usage is simply a nationalist exigency that they enactment for nary pay.

Every week, SAJED-Guinée (Service for Helping Young People successful Difficult Situations owed to Drugs) receives dozens of distress calls from relatives of addicts who are past taken to the installation successful the working-class Conakry neighbourhood of Dabompa.

In richer areas of the city, cocaine is the cause of choice. Elsewhere, the prevalent substances are tramadol, ace and – successful a caller inclination – kush, a deadly premix of cannabis, fentanyl, tramadol, formaldehyde and reportedly quality bones. People who fume it person been known to collapse, origin themselves bodily harm oregon adjacent die.

“People travel present from the madrasa [Islamic schools] and archer america that scholars told them: ‘Take this, you volition work good and rapidly learn’,” Koumbassa said, referring to kush. “It really destroys them.”

The squad archetypal encountered kush successful Conakry past March. Its usage has present dispersed truthful overmuch that patrons of nightclubs and lounges are known to beryllium mixing it into shisha pots.

Unlike its neighbours Guinea Bissau – seen arsenic a “narco-state” – and Sierra Leone, which is the determination hub for kush, cause maltreatment and trafficking are not readily associated with the much culturally blimpish Guinea. But experts accidental a situation is nether way, fuelled by a increasing marketplace operated by cross-border trafficking syndicates.

“The gangs successful Sierra Leone person ever moved to Guinea [when necessary], said Kars de Bruijne, elder probe chap with Dutch thinktank Clingendael’s struggle probe unit. “If a pack subordinate committed a transgression successful Sierra Leone oregon was different being looked for they would spell to Guinea and fell out.

“Similarly, we are alert of boats that sometimes determination materials including drugs from Guinea to Sierra Leone. There’s truly a lively cross-border informal trade.”

Data astir the cause maltreatment and trafficking concern is hard to travel by, but according to a UNODC report, astatine slightest 5.6 tonnes of cocaine were seized disconnected the seashore of Guinea betwixt January 2019 and June 2024. Earlier this year, Guinean authorities said they recovered 7 suitcases containing suspected cocaine successful a car belonging to the Sierra Leonean embassy.

Staff astatine SAJED accidental determination is simply a superior deficiency of consciousness astir remedies and therapy. Still, the nonprofit has handled much than 500 cases since 2019, erstwhile Koumbassa opened the centre aft returning inspired from workshops for psychologists successful Abuja and Accra.

“We person patients who travel from everywhere, from wrong the country, arsenic good arsenic students returning from places similar America and France,” said Yamoussa Bangoura, the centre’s caput of psychotherapy. “We privation to widen our operations to Boké [a metropolis adjacent Guinea-Bissau], and each the regions. But we don’t person the means.”

Many factors are to blasted for the cause epidemic, including poorness and porous borders. Some societal workers deliberation demonstrators against the junta that seized powerfulness successful a coup successful 2020 began taking drugs to springiness themselves the assurance to instrumentality to the streets. Some accidental the junta’s all-encompassing absorption connected holding connected to powerfulness has distracted it from regular affairs of the state.

The standard of the occupation has overwhelmed Guinea’s meagre capableness for treating addicts. The state lone has 2 known state-run centres catering to substance abuse. During the Covid-19 pandemic, 1 was closed for a time, overcrowding the other.

SAJED’s ain resources are highly limited. It tin lone instrumentality astir a twelve patients astatine a time.

The installation is mostly funded by the radical who worked there, but it besides receives tiny grants from backstage donors and the merchantability of fruits wrong the compound that patients assistance h2o regular to support them engaged. Sales of medicine for attraction provides different root of revenue, but astir of the patients are poor, truthful the session gives the medicine to them for nothing.

Rented from a subordinate of the Guinean diaspora astatine a heavy discounted rate, the compound consists of a single-storey gathering with cubicles wrong that service arsenic kitchen, laboratory and pharmacy. There is besides a tiny exigency country and 1 chamber each for men and women, arsenic good arsenic a communal country with a TV.

“People fearfulness to travel successful sometimes due to the fact that of the look of the building,” said Bangoura.

People suffering from slump and intoxicant addiction are besides invited astatine the clinic. One of those presently astatine the installation is Diallo Mahmoud, a 32-year-old whose intoxicant addiction began arsenic a teen drinking with elders. Over the past 3 years, helium moved to Abidjan and Brazzaville successful hunt of work, drowning his failures successful alcohol.

After breaking a vessel connected someone’s caput successful a combat astatine a Conakry nightclub, his siblings called SAJED. These days, helium and different patients astatine the session sermon beingness together, anticipating a antithetic absorption erstwhile they are discharged.

“After I permission here, I’ll not portion again and I’ll preach that to people,” Mahmoud said.

Stories similar his support the session unit going, adjacent erstwhile the roadworthy seems rough.

“We person travel to recognize that cause depletion is recurrent successful our homes, and the furniture it consumes the astir is the youth, the aboriginal of the nation,” said Koumbassa. “If we don’t assistance them get retired of it, it volition beryllium a occupation for the nation.”