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How American Intervention led to Punjab’s Heroin Epidemic by Sandeep Radhakrishnan
Placed on aluminium foil, the powder is heated with the help of a lighter and the ensuing smoke is inhaled through a currency note. Alternatively, and certainly more dangerously, the powder may be ‘cooked’ on a small metal tray with a little bit of water and sometimes with a drop or two of lemon juice (heroin is an alkaline base so it won't readily dissolve in water without something acidic). Once heated, a cigarette filter is placed in the tray through which a needle absorbs the newly formed solution with the function of the filter being to keep out the impurities. Upon injection, the user will feel a sudden rush as dopamine is released which then binds to the brain’s opioid receptors, responsible for regulating pain. These opioid receptors are found on inhibitory neurons, which exist to keep the neurons that produce dopamine in check. They become affected by the heroin in that they essentially stop functioning, leaving dopamine production to occur ceaselessly.
The euphoric rush is then followed by something more benign, and yet elusive - a feeling of safety. Any anxiousness, depression, or otherwise unpleasantness suddenly vanishes and for a while, only for a while, heroin can remove the user from the tenebrosity of everyday existence and cradle them to an unwonted lull. If this is what the user seeks, then it can only be because it is seemingly unattainable in daily life, efforts notwithstanding.
Such is the condition of the youth of North India. Desperate, despairing, and disillusioned with the world around them, intoxication makes for the only sensible path. Yet heroin is a path from which the odds of recovery are lower than alternative narcotics. So then why is heroin the drug of choice? It is said that 25% of Punjab’s youth population are addicted to the drug, which finds its way into the state from neighbouring Pakistan along the Amritsar border. Maqboolpura, a neighbourhood in Amritsar, is known as the ‘village of widows’ due to the astonishing number of men who have died as a result of their heroin addiction. A similar, although less serious problem exists in the North Eastern state of Manipur, where heroin is smuggled in from Burma. As of 2010, 28,000 people in the state had been diagnosed with HIV.