The addicts fighting synthetic 'kush' hell in rehab

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FREETOWN - Singing sweetly as she packed her bag to leave the rehab centre, Mariama Turay vowed never again to smoke kush, the fearsome drug that wrecked her marriage -- and countless lives in Sierra Leone.

"This drug is killing us slowly," sighed the gentle-mannered 29-year-old, elegantly made up with shiny rings in her ears and nose.

"I'm promising myself that I am not going there anymore."

After seven weeks of therapeutic rehab under military guard with doctors and social workers, she is ready to go home to her parents.

An hour's drive from the state-run centre where she was treated, desperate addicts who could not obtain therapeutic care lie chained to the floor for months in an informal detox house.

"The parents have nowhere to take their children," said Hassan Kamara, the traditional healer who runs it.

"It's impossible to control their children. The suffering is too much."

Highly addictive

Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio, in April 2024, declared a state of emergency due to a spike in deaths caused by kush, a synthetic drug containing powerful opioids and sometimes synthetic versions of cannabis-derived substances.

Tests on kush in Sierra Leone found nitazenes, a synthetic opioid comparable to fentanyl, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.

Mariama Turay (C) smiles next to her brother after being discharged and successfully finishing her seven-week rehabilitation programme

Cheap and highly addictive, kush can drive users psychotic, sparking hallucinations and damaging vital organs.

Once an aspiring actress, Turay fell into its grips aged 27 while suffering the stress of marital problems.

Her husband -- himself a user and dealer -- said the drug would help her sleep.

"It worked," she said. But soon she was wanting more, morning and evening.

Her husband left and moved to Canada, where he received addiction treatment and remarried. Turay moved back in with her parents and her life fell apart.

"The drug was controlling me. My body ached until I smoked it," she recalled.

"I sold my television, my wedding clothes, my wedding ring, because I didn't want men to use me -- just for the drugs."

The national detox centre that treated her -- until recently, the only one in the poverty-stricken country -- has provided treatment to over 300 addicts since opening in February 2024. More than 2,000 are on the waiting list.

Kamara said the centre he runs at his home in the Freetown suburbs has helped over 2,000 addicts recover through his "healing process" of abrupt severance.

Detoxing addicts chained to beds

On a visit by AFP to Kamara's barricaded house, six young men sprawled on filthy mattresses with iron chains restraining their ankles.

Weakened by hunger and thirst and in some cases apparently sedated, they lay dazed with anguished looks in their eyes.

"I am O.K. with the treatment," said one of them, Manso Koroma, under Kamara's watchful eye.

After four months chained to the bed, "I've recovered," said Koroma, a 31-year-old man with a stricken expression and a haggard, scarred body.

"I'm just waiting for my sister to come and I can leave here."

A former motorcycle taxi rider, he had one leg amputated at the knee after a traffic accident -- and took kush for the pain.

"When I came here, I was really violent. It took two days before the healer could start the healing process," he said.

Kush kills young people

Kamara treats addicts with "leaves from the forests and the Holy Koran", he said, showing AFP bottles of unidentified concoctions.

"I use the chain to protect them from escaping," he said. "I'm doing them good."

He acknowledged that his patients live in poor conditions but said his centre is under-resourced. He pleaded with the government for help.

Ansu Konneh, director of mental health at the country's social welfare ministry, said the government wanted to remove people from such unofficial sites, of which he estimates there are more than a dozen.

"A lot of violations against human rights are taking place in these informal centres," he said.

"We cannot legitimise them by helping them."

A second official national rehab centre opened in the south on May 16.

Fears of relapse

In late April, Turay was among 52 former addicts aged 17 to 35 who walked out of the official rehab centre on the outskirts of Freetown. Most were at university when they became addicted.

Some took selfies, singing and joking.

But others wore haunted looks and spoke with voices still slurred from the effects of the drug.

At her family home, Turay hugged her parents and brothers and asked them to forgive her.

She kneeled at the feet of her father Ibrahim, 60.

"Thank you, God! Today my daughter is back home," he said. "I hope you've learned your lesson."

"Of course," she replied, sobbing.

But her mother Aissata frets about relapse.

"I am worried that Mariama will go back to smoking because where we live there are so many people who smoke kush."

In her bedroom, the young woman unpacked her belongings along with a manual: "12 steps for recovery for an addict".

She said she wanted to go back to college, train as a beautician and one day "have a child, if God blesses me with the right man".