"Mr. Vatsyayan, who says marijuana tempts the young with the escape it offers. And quitting is not easy. The withdrawal symptoms include mood swings, restlessnes, sharp cravings."
Out on the lawns of a well-known school in Delhi, Karan Singh had his first encounter with marijuana. Urged by seniors that winter afternoon, Karan puffed on the well-rolled, slender joint that began his love affair with Mary Jane. Since then, he has spanned the whole gamut—smoking stuff friends got him, asking his driver to score for him, getting it straight from the hills to, well, growing his own stuff. “I have had a long stretch, but growing it is the best way to have premium quality stuff at half the cost, and with very little effort, once you know the tricks,” he says. Many would say that serious-mindedness might more productively be channelled into studies, the sports arena or a hobby—for Karan is only 13.
It’s an age too early to even contemplate doing drugs. Disturbingly, that’s not so for many schoolchildren—some as young as 11—who are hooked to marijuana. “Five to 10 per cent of marijuana cases that come to us are kids aged 11-14,” says Dr Sameer Malhotra, director of mental and behavioural sciences at Max Hospital in Delhi. Over the last few years, the age of experimentation with marijuana (or cannabis, pot, bhang) has gone down from the 16-18 age group that was the norm earlier, agrees Mr.Suneel Vatsyayan, a psychotherapist and director at the Nada India Foundation. A South Delhi dealer says some 15 per cent of his buyers are schoolchildren. At the Civil Hospital in Gurgaon, Dr Brahm Deep Sindhu, a psychiatrist, encounters some 10 cases every month of children brought in by friends or family with the side-effects of smoking pot: delusions, paranoia, acute excitement. Dr Malhotra speaks of a pot-addled kid who believed he was God!
Even those who take a liberal view of ‘soft drugs’ like pot will agree pre- or early teens are too young and naive to begin. At risk is physical and mental development. Leave alone extreme side-effects like psychosis, the amotivational syndrome (chronic do-nothingism and apathy towards relationships) associated with marijuana use can wreak long-term havoc on young minds. And though it might not hold true for older users, there’s a high risk of the very young , with a lower threshold for experimentation, segueing from pot to hard drugs.
Trying marijuana for the first few times, with the hallucinations and riding-on-waves effect it induces, is scary for many; even so, there are those who return enough times to get addicted. “The first time I tried, I had a panic attack,” says Karan. “It calms you down, slows your pace. And you get agitated about this feeling.” Nor was it great for Ankush, who started at 14. Contrary to the studied opinion of doctors, regular smokers rationalise these initial bad trips as the result of using bad stuff. Once dependence sets in, as with all addictions, it takes higher doses to get an effective high.
The chief reason children are getting addicted to marijuana is of course its easy availability. Waltzing with a variety of self-images, they are vulnerable to peer pressure and give in to easily available experimentation. “Every auto driver knows where you can get it,” says Bhushan Pradhan, a frequent user. And once a person is in the circuit, it’s almost ridiculously easy these days. A peddler Outlook met is blase about selling to schoolchildren: “These kids will get it one way or the other...I have to make my money.”
Almost all psychiatrists in Delhi have stories of schoolchildren brought in for marijuana abuse. One delusional child thought he was God!
Marijuana has always been relatively cheap in India—in Delhi, a packet costs Rs 50-100—so it’s an easy pocket money-fuelled addiction. “If I have drinks, I spend Rs 70 in one night; I take home a packet of weed and it makes me four or five joints,” says Bhushan. Those with bigger allowances go for hash (the concentrated resin from marijuana), costing Rs 1,500-4,000 per tola. A tola is good for 6-10 joints. Those who want to go really cheap can buy bhang golis or churans, with brand names like Bhola or Shiv, for as less as Rs 2 a sachet. Dr Sindhu says some girls prefer marijuana-laced pastes and powders marketed as ‘dant manjan’, which they rub on their gums or mix with their chewing gum to get the high. These cost no more than Rs 20-50 per tin and can be made to last.
The ‘cool factor’ is also a big propeller. Drug use no longer evokes the kind of shock among schoolchildren that it once did. “I’ve had students whose elder siblings would ask them to score a stash,” exclaims Bani Malhotra, a counseller. The internet, popular culture, the anti-establishmentism associated with marijuana, its use in Indian religion, especially in the cult of Shiva, now seen as a ‘cool dude’—young, wild and free—by many Indian youths, is also pushing the habit. The kids want to know what Bob Marley means when he sings Ganja in my brain or declares that “When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself”. Says Bani, “Honey Singh, with his songs on alcohol and drugs is a crowd-puller. So many kids are also sporting marijuana T-shirts.”
Trouble is, it doesn’t seem like the curiosity is limited to just trying it out. “It’s now about continuous use,” says Bani. Family and academic pressures and the inability to find healthy ways of coping are all factors, says Mr. Vatsyayan, who says marijuana tempts the young with the escape it offers. And quitting is not easy. The withdrawal symptoms include mood swings, restlessnes, sharp cravings.
A child’s addiction is a devastating nightmare for parents. Some even resort to hiring detectives to check up. “We have some 10 cases a month of parents checking on their children, and two or three of them are always on point,” says Bhawana Paliwal, who runs the Tejas Detective Agency.
Doctors say the repercussions of marijuana addiction at a young age are enormous. “The physical and mental consequences are immense. There is a visible decline in the child’s overall development,” says Dr Malhotra. There are also behavioural changes, isolationism, and there’s the added complication of social stigma, for the child and the parents. “The enforcement of laws must be more stringent. The fact that whitener, a banned product as it is sniffed to provide an addictive high, is still being sold in stationery stores is alarming enough,” says Vatsyayan. “I have had many parents who were forced to change their place of residence. Some had to put their child in in a new school or send him off to a hostel to escape the kind of attention drawn by a so-called ‘spoilt’ child,” says Dr Sindhu.
All that, however, seems lost on students like Anand, who says he tried to quit thrice—just for the sake of it—and happily returned to the habit. With a chuckle, he adds, “It’s a good thing to do when you have nothing to do.” Typical addict attitude, psychiatrists would say.
(Some names have been changed)
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AUTHORS: Stuti Agarwal
http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/why-is-the-school-so-high-maam/297105