“I was looking at people – they were unhappy, too serious. Some of my friends became drug users. So I tried to avoid them, not to contact. But, at one moment, my old friend brought opium from the Issyk kul region. He asked me to sell it and split money. I agreed, because I was unemployed at that time, but knew the drug user community.” Sergey then decided to try what he sold. “I thought if I would inject once a month, I would not ‘sit down to the needle’. Then, when I started, I got addicted anyway. I started using once a week, twice a week, and then as much as I could afford. It turned out that when the drug reaches the blood, everything immediately switched on in my head. Thus, you can inject as much as you like. Moreover, you start feeling yourself psychologically and physically more comfortable with drugs in your blood than without.”

A drug addict’s communication group also consists of only drug users, because by then he is unable to talk with ordinary people, nor is he interested anymore. “You are communicating with common people when you need to get money for a dose of heroin”.

As for getting the drugs, it is not a problem once one is in the system. One dose of heroin costs $2.5. “You could inject as many doses as your budget allows. I was in debt with interests accrued, but still I was injecting 10-20 doses daily. Doses, called ‘checks’, are sold at so-called ‘check points’. When you are trying to stop, drug traders offer to give it for free. But when you are injecting regularly, they do not provide rebates. I tried drugs for the first time in 1992. I quit in 2002.

Cops caught us constantly, but we had been dealing with them. Friends, relatives – all ‘bought us out’ from imprisonment. The ‘check points’ were not closed by the cops, because they were headed by policemen. I suppose that they are the major suppliers of drugs to the check points. Some high ranking officials provide protection for the drug dealing cops”, says Sergey.

Sergey then tells of how he stopped taking drugs. “Overall, I have not been living in my house. Just once a month I visited my mother, changed my clothes and went away again. Once, I looked at myself in the mirror, and I was in shock, because I was so skinny. When I returned from army I weighed 120 kg. But after three years of injections, I was only 50 kg! Once, a friend of my sister’s came and told me I had dramatically changed. I told him I was on heroin. He said his brother had also been on heroin and he cured him from it. He shut his brother in an apartment, leaving him without drugs for a couple of months and he had healed out. He suggested to help me. He locked me in at my apartment on the ninth floor, brought all my clothes and just provided meals everyday.

15 days passed. My girlfriend visited me, but I was not allowed to leave room. I told her, ‘let’s quit together’. After a while, we persuaded her and we were shut inside for a month. And at that moment I noted that when one drug addict opts out, he can help another heal faster. The first ten days I could not sleep. But when my friend joined, she was sleeping already on the second day. At that moment, she had been on heroin for 18 years…”.

Sergey says they were treated for a while. What was scary, he told me, was that they had not known what it was like to live without drugs. “We were so addicted that we could not imagine another life. We learned that one of our friends addict friends was attending a group of anonymous drug users. She told us several success stories how people returned to ‘ordinary life’, and we started visiting sessions. It was at the beginning, but at the beginning only. We are now attending it for two years and try to involve other drug addicts to join us. I noted that not all drug addicts want to free themselves from drugs. It seemed to me that if I wanted to, then all addicts wanted to as well. Some like drugs, other fear them. Some could not imagine life without drugs. They fear the physical pain. Therefore, drug users cannot return to ordinary life without external help.

It is now the second year that Sergey and his friend are visiting sessions. They follow the twelve step program that originated from the U.S. They have begun to build their lives again. “We saw former drug users who started a new life. We could do that too. My mother was happy, and life became easier”, concludes Sergey.