DURBAN - Recovering heroin addicts have warned against experimenting with whoonga, sugars or nyaope, saying that once you get a taste, it’s hard to escape the nightmare cycle of a user.
Agreeing to speak to The Independent on Saturday this week, three former addicts are part of a pilot opioid substitution therapy programme run by Durban University of Technology’s Urban Futures Centre. They were waiting to get their daily dose of methadone at the project centre when they sat down and shared their stories.
Sacrament Ntuli, who’d been using whoonga since 2008, joined the programme on his birthday in June last year.
“I started using it when my parents died. My guardian had no idea I was using it, but he could see that I had changed. I wanted to change my life because I couldn’t do anything normal any more. Everything I did, the little money I got, all went to my next hit. I didn’t want to live that life anymore,” he said.
Ntuli said after he told his guardian about his addiction, he was introduced to the opioid substitution therapy programme.
“I’m six or seven months into the programme, and I’ve been clean all this time. If I can make it one year clean, I would have accomplished something great in my life. I want to change my life – it will take time, I know.”
Njabulo Gumede, of Mayville, said he began using whoonga in August 2016 and went on the programme early last year.
“Methadone helped change my life. I didn’t have arosta (cravings) any more. The people here encourage us to live better lives by not doing drugs. Through the programme, I’ve discovered the root cause of my addiction.”
Nhlakanipho Msomi, of Lamontville, had been on heroin for six years before discovering the programme. He said there was a holistic improvement in his life and he had learnt how to open up and deal with his problems by talking with the social workers.
“It’s not just about methadone, we’re also taught about behaviour. When I was still using it, I used to hustle money for my next high all the time. Now, when I do get money, I buy myself clothes and nice things to eat,” he said.
Another beneficiary, who didn’t want to be named, said while he looked like a 16-year-old boy without any facial hair, he was actually 27.
“I started using in 2006, this thing stunted my growth. It’s no good, people who want to try it must come here and ask us about it because the addiction life is not a life for anyone.”
The pilot project, run by the Urban Futures Centre in conjunction with the TB HIV Care Association, is the first of its kind in South Africa where methadone is administered for free to heroin users as a substitute.
Methadone is an artificial opioid similar to heroin, which is also used as a base for other street drugs, like whoonga, sugars or nyaope. The UFC’s Sibonelo Gumede said the organisation started helping 19 beneficiaries, aged between 19 and 45 in April and now helps 50.
“We give them medication and then track their changing quality of life. The indicators we use in this tracking are reintegration with their families, improvement in health and to remove them from the criminal justice system,” he said.
Gumede said illicit drug users crossed paths with the criminal justice system constantly and found themselves in and out of prison. He said the pharmaceutically produced methadone helped with withdrawals and cravings, allowing users to lead a more productive life.
He said psycho-social intervention sessions were also part of the programme because drug use was often related to other problems.
Klaas Mtshweni, a social worker at the centre in Umbilo, where beneficiaries go for their daily doses of methadone, said most of the beneficiaries had turned their lives around – out of the 50, only three or four had dropped out.
“We run a harm reduction, not an abstinence, programme, so you find that of the 50, there are about four who still use drugs but have reduced their consumption."
Mtshweni said this reduction in usage made the users’ lives better because they were able to function and look for jobs. Some challenges the project faces are lack of family support for users and lack of understanding and knowledge of drug addiction by families.
“Another is that people don’t have enough knowledge about methadone. They think you take it for two or three days and then everything should be fine, you’re cured. It takes long-term maintenance to get the optimum result, which means you have to be on methadone for at least a year,” he said, adding that stigma was still an issue when it came to drug addiction, especially in cases where users had hidden their addiction from their families.
Kalvanya Padayachee, with the TB HIV Care Association and site manager at the centre in Umbilo, said: “We did a formative assessment at the beginning of 2015 when we estimated about 327 people in eThekwini were injecting drugs.”
By the middle of August 2016, they had started working with about 24 addicts. She said the association offered HIV testing and counselling, TB and STI screening, wound care, as well as referrals to a state facility.
To try to combat the spread of HIV and hepatitis B and C among vulnerable populations through the sharing of needles, the organisation provides sterile injecting equipment.
“We do the collection of used and disposed needles in communities. Currently we have 74 hot spots out of the 16 wards we service in eThekwini.”