The new drug high is all about a trip — to have a session with a dead relative, to embark on a spiritual journey or to just woo the alter ego. Narcotics monitors tell DEEBASHREE MOHANTY how dangerous this new trend is as most users are unaware of the fatal fallouts of such drug adventurism
December 2, 2007: Abhijeet Goenka from Haryana was found dead in his hostel room. He was a medical student who was experimenting with a cocktail of two acetomorphine drugs. Goenka wanted to see if coke and morphine could induce a trance. He vomited 61 times, and died within two hours of the deadly intake.
January 13, 2009: Ashish Rajput and three friends were found dead in his car in an isolated area. High on lSD, they were on a healing trip — out to invoke their spiritual side. All three died within two hours.
July 01, 2013: Aashima Taneja, (16) student of a popular Delhi public school, said she wanted to try Ecstacy with a dash of lemon as it gave her a floating feeling, ‘as if I was in heaven’. The lemon reacted with the excessive pills and Taneja suffered multiple organ failure. She was brain dead for 14 days before she breathed her last.
October 13, 2013: Nitin and Gauri Khanna were discovered dead in their Panjim flat. There were scratch marks and bruises on both the bodies, which intrigued Goa Police. The post-mortem examination revealed that the newlyweds had had an overdose of cocaine with cube lSDs and some MGMA hash in their apartment. It was later found that they (worked in Delhi) wanted to be on a drug-induced trance. Although investigations are still on, it is believed that the Khannas might have hurt each other brutally in a drugged state. later, the drugs killed them.
I will kill me. I will kill me. It is not over”. These were the last words that Agrima Singh (name changed) uttered in his room in Sainik Farms on January 18, 2007. His hapless parents and a younger sister were aghast. Singh (23) was jumping fiercely on his bed. He was screaming at the top of his voice and kept hitting himself with a baseball bat. His eyes were red in anger and desperation. On his table, lay 20 gm cocaine, 10 packets of cube lSD, 10 small pills of micro lSD and 5 gm of MDMA. Trance music was playing in the background. Singh hit himself for five hours before a doctor came and tied him to his bed. He was medicated and shifted to a rehab centre in Bangalore. He lived there for two years before coming out clean. Even today, Singh cannot stick to any job. He is nervous and jittery all the time.
“At first, I thought my son was possessed. Imagine a 90 kg boy jumping on the bed, hitting himself and screaming aloud! He was restless and in panic. He threatened to beat us up if we didn’t help him out. But what could we have doneIJ His sister started crying, his father was frantically making calls. I just stood there looking at my son. That day, we lost him to a bad trip,” celebrity author Madhulita Singh says.
Singh had no idea that her son was on drugs till that day. She says, it was like any other normal day. Agrima and the rest of them had dinner and went off to sleep. “What happened later that night took my son away from me forever. Today, he doesn’t mingle with friends. Keeps himself locked up most times and is very fearful. We don’t know what he saw or felt in that trip. He never talks about it,” she recalls, in tears.
For Singh, no amount of psychiatric help can bring a person back from a bad trip. “Tripping related cases are very few. Although, I have dealt with a lot of high-profile cases related to lSD and drug abuse, the boys get away with the excuse that they were forced to try out. Peer pressure is high. In many cases a person gets into a self-induced trance or goes on an intentional trip without knowing fallout on him. Not all types of drugs agree with a constitution. One needs to tread carefully,” Dr Harish Kothari, renowned drug abuse consultant in New Delhi, says. Dr Kothari tells you that in the last five years, he has seen many cases of drug adventures which have lead to fatalities.
“India has around four million drug addicts and the number is spiralling. It will get worse once recreational drugs penetrate the lower-income groups. When that happens, the total could number tens of millions. The Indian middle class is growing extremely fast, creating disorientation, new wealth and an appetite for sensation-seeking. For a drug baron, that’s the perfect emerging market,” Kothari says and officers at the Narcotics Control Bureau in New Delhi nod in agreement. Officers tell you that charas peddlers and the heroin mafia have given way to more sophisticated drug dealers who know what the youth want.
“Drug adventures are not new in India but these days, it is the ready availability of even rare varieties that has have made these cases far more frequent and dangerous. The online route is being exploited by peddlers to look for a community to sell their ‘stuff’. They openly advertise that only people who want to experiment after drug consumption should arrange for a meet. It becomes quite a task to track such criminals,” Rajiv Mehta, Director General, NCRD, says.
Young consumers worry Mehta the most. “The age of consumption is drastically coming down and that is a thing to panic about. They can afford cheaper varieties of drugs,” Mehta says.
The NGO Yes, in association with the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital (IGMCH), had recently revealed an alarming rate of first timers in India — 54 per cent between the age of 15-34 years had consumed drugs for the first time in 2013.
So do these trips killIJ Yes records 23 deaths due to drug abuse, reported from India with Delhi, Mumbai and Himachal Pradesh being worst affected. “With a lackluster drug law in place and with no education on drug use, these numbers could rise manifold. More than 60 per cent such cases don’t get reported, filed instead as suicides,” Yes director Arogya Pradhan says. Pradhan has been working closely with the Shimla drug abuse case where a 23-year-old boy was found dead on Mall Road in May, 2013. He had consumed 50 gm Ecstacy pills and was on to a spiritual session with a dead relative.
“It is difficult to report such cases because there can be very little explanation to what really happened. Even cops don’t believe that drug adventures can be fatal. They dismiss all such cases as suicides but they are much graver than that,” Kothari says, giving an example.
In August 2010, a 21-year-old resident of North Delhi was found in his hostel room, battered. He had been dead for two days. According to his classmates, Dheeraj Kumar (he used this anonymous name) was last seen mixing cocaine and lSD for a party. “Those days, it was unheard of a person going on a drug trance. But he did so and died. He consumed the drugs and was on a personal trance before succumbing. Kumar had written down all that he had discussed with his alter ego while he was in this self-induced state that lasted over two hours. There is proof of him having asked his ego about his past life before the drug took its toll and killed him,” Kothari recalls.
The police, however, had a completely different theory to this case. The note that Kumar had left behind was taken as a suicide note and forensics established that Kumar’s organs had failed him due to an overdose. “We have not wrapped up investigations but it looks like suicide. Kumar was suffering from low esteem and had contemplated taking his life many times before,” sub-inspector Vikram Dahiya of Model Town says, recalling the case.
Kothari argues that the role of a psychiatrist cannot be downplayed in such instances. These days he says, apart from drug-induced trips and trance, there are drug-induced sleep therapy and spiritual sessions with the dead that are popular, especially in the party circuit. These are extremely dangerous to try out, he adds.
“I have come across many users who have taken drugs to have a spiritual session with a close relative who is no longer there. More than 60 per cent of the time, however, young boys want to experiment for fun. There are others who seriously indulge in such activities at least once or twice a year. These are mostly patients of depression. Such experiments, if undertaken by a person with a weak heart, can turn fatal. People who have been a part of this journey tell you that the experience is out of the world. It’s vivid and no hallucination,” Dr Sushila Thackeray from VIMHANS, New Delhi, explains.
She says, sustained drug education at school and college levels can help curb this growing menace.
“We need more stringent drug laws in place. As of now, there is a loophole that can be easily breached. let’s start with educating children about the pros and cons of consuming drugs. It is like sex education. like it is not advisable to mix your drinks, it is also not advisable to mix your drugs. Children don’t know that. Also they need to be educated on the fatal fallout of going on a trip, for instance. They may not know that in some cases (in the US and the UK) children never came back from a bad trip. These patients are brain dead and lie listless in some hospital bed even today,” Thackeray claims.
The 2012 World Drug Report cited an increase in synthetic drug production worldwide, “including significant increases in the production and consumption of psychoactive substances not under international control. And these psychoactive drugs are known to kill — Seizures due to methamphetamine doubled in 2010 compared with 2008 and seizures due to overdose of ecstasy pills more than doubled.
“An lSD-based trip usually depends on your thinking at the time of consumption. If a person is at peace with himself, he will have a safe trip. A person nursing a mental trauma or is anxious could die on a trip. Drug adventures take an ugly shape if one is not keeping good spiritual health as well,” consulting psychiatrist, Dr Reddys’, Pallavi Joshi, says.
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At first, I thought my son was possessed. Imagine a 90kg boy jumping on the bed, hitting himself and screaming aloud! He was restless and in panic. He threatened to beat us up if we didn’t help him out. But what could we have doneIJ His sister started crying, his father was frantically making calls and I just stood there looking at my son. That day, we lost him to a bad trip. What happened later that night took my son away from me forever. Today, he doesn’t mingle with friends. Keeps himself locked up most times and is very fearful. We don’t know what he saw or felt in that trip. He never talks about it
— Madhulita Singh, celebrity author
Tripping cases are very few. Although I have dealt with a lot of high-profile cases related to lSD and drug abuse, the boys get away with the excuse that they were forced to try it out. Peer pressure is high. In many cases a person gets into a self-induced trance or goes on an intentional trip without knowing fallout on him. Not all types of drugs agree with a constitution. One needs to tread carefully
— Dr Harish Kothari,
drug abuse consultant
Drug adventures are not new in India but these days, it is the ready availability of even rare varieties that has made these cases far more frequent and dangerous. The online route is being exploited by peddlers to look for a community to sell their ‘stuff’. They openly advertise that only people who want to experiment after drug consumption should arrange for a meet. It becomes quite a task to track such criminals
— Rajiv Mehta, director general, NCRD
With a lackluster drug law in place and with no education on drug use, these numbers could rise manifold. More than 60 per cent such cases don’t get reported, filed instead as suicides
— Aroygya Pradhan, director, Yes
We need more stringent drug laws in place. As of now, there is a loophole that can be easily breached. let’s start with educating children about the pros and cons of consuming drugs. It’s like sex education. like it is not advisable to mix your drinks, it is also not advisable to mix your drugs. Children don’t know that. Also they need to be educated on the fatal fallout of going on a trip. They may not know that in some cases (in the US and the UK) children have never returned from a trip gone bad. These patients are brain dead and lie listless in some hospital bed even today
— Dr Sushila Thackeray, VIMHANS