Ex-addicts live their lives on the edge. The shame, guilt and powerlessness can be overwhelming. Those who’ve successfully recovered worked hard to understand what led them to substance abuse, and how they can keep the addiction from invading their lives again. An ex-addict, 25, who asked to remain anonymous, told Kuwait Times about his story with addiction and how substance abuse was an intruder that encroached onto every aspect of his life.

He remembers the first time he smoked a drug-laced cigarette at the age of 12. “It’s just for fun,” his friend told him. “Hashish was the drug in the cigarette I smoked. My friend told me to smoke just for fun and said its effect is temporary and will vanish before I reached home. I tried it – it felt like an adventure; it gave me some sort of happiness,” the ex-addict said.

At the age of 15, he struggled with tough exams like his peers. “I saw my unintelligent friend studying and memorizing the curriculum while taking a pill. When I asked him about it, he said this pill increases his focus and calms his nerves in order to answer the exam questions smoothly, and gave me one. It was Tramadol 225, which we call ‘strawberry’. As my body size was different, I took a double dose, which is considered an overdose,” he recalled.

His addiction continued for “fun” only, but as time passed, the ex-addict fell deeper and deeper into the abyss, which set him on a dangerous path. “You do drugs to forget and put your troubles out of your mind, but when you come crashing down, it makes your entire situation worse,” he noted.

Teachers too

He claimed students are not the only ones who are involved in addiction, but teachers too. “I remember the day our teacher got a panic attack because of a drug he took a day before, whose effect was still continuing. The teacher would take drugs from student distributors in exchange for services he provided, such as high grades,” he alleged.

Addiction is something that can affect the human brain and behavior. When someone is addicted to drugs, they can’t resist the urge to use them, no matter how much harm the drugs may cause. The ex-addict told Kuwait Times that many reasons lead to addiction, which the society does not consider as serious.

“One of the reasons that led me deeper into addiction is mental issues. All addicts escape their reality of loneliness, trauma, depression, abuse or having no one there to care or listen. Even the support from family is missing. Some parents do not harm their children directly or deliberately, but because of their habits and how they were raised, they consider it the correct way to raise their children too,” he explained.

According to him, the methods used to raise children nowadays are not correct. “They do not allow us to express our feelings. Parents do not understand the emotions that even boys can go through. They do not understand our needs that need to be heard and they still cannot understand the need to heal from mental issues. Addicts escape reality in an unreal world through drugs. Even drugs sometimes make us feel insecure about ourselves and make us aggressive towards people we love, people who we want just a hug from,” he said.

At the age of 17, he started buying drugs with his own money, and the quality and quantity he used increased over time. “Drugs are available everywhere. The price of a narcotic pill ranges between KD 1 to KD 50 depending on the quantity and type. If we could not have access to drugs we needed, we used to take a veterinary drug that is considered somewhat legal, similar to catnip,” he said.

“There was no direct communication with the dealer – we dealt with the distributors, who were all students. The students’ monthly income ranged from KD 1,000 to KD 10,000, and we always saw them driving the most luxurious cars despite their young age. The distributors dropped out of school because of their high income. Dealers even work from jail. You do not meet them in person – they leave the drug on the tyre of a car and send you the location of the car,” he told Kuwait Times.

Road to recovery

The ex-addict said his recovery began when he found a positive relationship. “Recovering from an addiction is difficult when it is done alone. It’s important to understand that addicts need their loved ones to stick to their sobriety plan. The best thing people can do for someone in recovery from an addiction is stand by their side during their ongoing journey,” he said.

“I found acceptance by a person, who understood my emotions, did not judge me and accepted the fact that I’m not a bad person because I am an addict. When I see people who do not accept me, it proves that I’m not worthy. The rejection breaks and destroys addicts and adds more insecurities to the list,” he explained.

He added addicts cannot survive withdrawal symptoms unless there is someone who supports them and stands by their side even during minor setbacks, and the treatment process needs baby steps. Even after recovery, an addict still struggles with the urge to return to addiction to escape reality. According to him, addiction is much cheaper than therapy. Also, government institutions are not trustworthy, and addicts are afraid of getting arrested. “Sadly, addicts also struggle with the social stigma that often surrounds addiction,” he rued.

Forcing addicts into treatment is futile. One has to voluntarily seek out treatment to have a better chance of recovery. The greatest problem of getting out of addiction is being addicted to something else, he said. “When a person gets out of addiction, he gets addicted to something else. No fewer than 70 percent of young people are addicted, whether to drugs, alcohol, a person or self-harm. Prices of drugs are affordable for children or adults, and it’s easy to buy, not necessary from a dealer, but also medical staff,” he added.

Addiction makes a person more social, while ex-addicts suffer from being introverted and cannot socialize with people as they did before. “The normal life I used to have as an addict is gone. New and even old things that used to help me overcome my problems and be happy have become meaningless. Life becomes a drag, even prayer and getting closer to God is cumbersome,” he said.

Recovered addicts often hesitate to tell their families and friends about their problems for fear of being criticized or abandoned. Ex-addicts told Kuwait Times their biggest fear is for their family to learn about their addiction. “I wasn’t afraid of dying of an overdose, but of being my family being ashamed if they know about my addiction. I only seek acceptance – I’m afraid my family could lose hope in me,” he indicated./KT

Jahra recorded a temperature of 53 C degrees, the highest in Kuwait in the past 48 hours, meteorologist Abdulaziz Al-Qarawi said Tuesday. The temperature is expected to exceed 50 degrees across the country on Thursday before dropping slightly to around 46-48 degrees, he added. Eleven locations in Kuwait where among the top fifteen cities to record the highest temperatures in the world on Monday, according to eldoradoweather.com. Kuwait took the top nine spots in the website’s chart for the world’s hottest locations in 24 hours./KT

Germany’s spy chief on Tuesday admitted that the country has become a platform for the PKK terror organization’s fundraising and recruitment activities targeting Türkiye.

“The PKK is organizing various fundraising campaigns in Germany, and then using this money to finance terror attacks in Türkiye,” Thomas Haldenwang, head of the German domestic intelligence agency BfV, told a news conference in Berlin.

He said the PKK terror group is also using various associations in Germany to recruit young people as foreign fighters, who are then sent to Türkiye, Syria, or Iraq.

“The PKK remains an international terror organization, it continues violent attacks and killings in the region,” he stressed.

According to the BfV’s annual security report released on Tuesday, the PKK terror organization is the biggest foreign extremist group in the country, with around 14,500 followers.

The terrorist group raised an estimated €16.7 million ($17.8 million) in Germany last year, and also raised more than €30 million in Europe in various fundraising campaigns, the report said.

Since 2013, at least 295 foreign fighters from Germany have traveled to northern Syria and Iraq where they received military training from PKK terrorists and took part in armed attacks in the region, according to the report.

At least 30 of these foreign fighters have died in battle zones, while nearly 150 of them have returned to Germany in recent years, the report said, without giving any further details.

In northern Syria, the PKK terror group is called the YPG/PKK, as stressed by Turkish officials.

According to the BfV, followers of the PKK group committed more than 300 crimes last year in Germany, including violent attacks, resulting in personal injury and property damage. At least nine people were injured in these attacks.

“In Europe, the PKK has been trying to portray itself as a non-violent group,” the report said, referring to the terrorist organization’s propaganda activities to influence European public opinion.

But in many demonstrations in recent years, PKK followers used violence and clashed with the police or political opponents, according to the report.

The PKK, which is classified as an “ethno-nationalist” and “separatist” terrorist organization by the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol, has been banned in Germany since 1993.

Although Türkiye has repeatedly called on its NATO ally Germany to take stronger action against the PKK, the terrorist group’s activities have been largely tolerated by authorities, and Berlin has been reluctant to do more to combat the group.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK has been responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants./aa

Online platforms are obliged to remove terrorist content within an hour in the EU as the bloc’s new legislation became applicable on Tuesday.

The EU passed the Terrorist Content Online Regulation in 2021 to ensure that hosting service providers act promptly if terrorist content has been published or disseminated on their sites.

The law, which entered into force a year ago, gave 12 months for the online platforms to adapt to the changes.

Under the law, all online platforms, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, must remove terrorist content in an hour after the Europol or an EU member state’s law enforcement authority issues an order.

In addition to directly soliciting to commit or contribute to terrorist offenses, the legislation considers inciting, advocating, or glorifying such acts as terrorist content.

Providers may face a penalty of up to 4% of the platform’s annual revenue if they fail to comply with the one-hour removal order./aa

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced Tuesday that monkeypox will be listed as a notifiable disease in England starting June 8.

It means doctors will have to notify their local council if they suspect a patient has monkeypox and labs will have to notify the UKHSA if they identify the virus in a lab sample.

"Rapid diagnosis and reporting is the key to interrupting transmission and containing any further spread of Monkeypox. This new legislation will support us and our health partners to swiftly identify, treat and control the disease,” said Wendi Shepherd, the monkeypox incident director at the UKHSA. "It also supports us with the swift collection and analysis of data which enables us to detect possible outbreaks of the disease and trace close contacts rapidly, whilst offering vaccinations where appropriate to limit onward transmission."

The UKHSA has insisted that the risk of monkeypox to the general population “remains low” because the virus does not spread easily and only through close physical contact.

There were 302 confirmed cases Monday in the UK./aa