Fifteen emaciated young adults were lying creased and crumpled on their cots. None of them bothered to raise their head to see the thirty-five or so men and women came to see them. Not that they did not want to, but perhaps they were unable to bother. Crave for the “substance” had taken their will to socialize, even to live. The volunteer guards and the high walls, and the locked iron gates of TREDA (Treatment Rehabilitation and Education of Drug abuse) forced them to stay on. What went on in their minds? No one knows. Perhaps they thought nothing. Felt nothing, except crave for the substance. Anyone who had a glance at these emaciated men could grasp the deadly enslaving effect of the “substance”.
The students who visited the centre had perhaps other things in mind - one I am sure is the report they shoul write and presentations they should prepare. But a nagging thought is this: most of the inmates of the institution are victims of a social system which gives sweet poison labled as extra-nourisher in the children's hand to taste and tell them not to drink. And they say, the choice is theirs! If drinking stopped the multimillion business will crumple. Who will sponsor Bangaluru's 20-20? government will lose the tax and the servants of the public lose kickback. The system needs alcoholics, drug addicts, and so on. Three cheers for substance abusers!
substance users exist becuase everyone else wants them to exist. apart from the money we want them to exist because they keep help reinforce the notion of abnormaility and demonise the substance itself.
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