Thirty-two-year-old Electrical Engineering graduate, Jide Awoyemo, has secretly been using marijuana, but the devil took the blame when the young man, in a dramatic fashion, took to the streets in his boxers last May.
The drama that ensued after the incident has become history for many people but not for Awoyemo who has undergone a rehab at a neuro-psychiatric centre in Lokoja, Kogi State.
The young man, who narrated his tribulation to our correspondent, noted that he fell in love with the addictive substance after he lost his job in Lagos in 2012.
He said, “I worked as a contract site engineer for a Chinese telecommunications firm for three years, even though I was supposed to be confirmed a member of staff after six months.
“When I mustered the courage to ask my boss the reason for the delay, he only told me he would do something about it. What I got in return after three days of making this inquiry was a sack letter. There was no reasonable explanation, just as there was no severance pay.”
Welcome to the world of marijuana
When he could no longer afford to pay his own share of the rent in the two-bedroomed apartment he shared with his friend in Ebute Meta, Awoyemo said he had to relocate to his parents’ house in Lokoja.
He added, “I thought that since my dad was an engineer, I could work with him while searching for other jobs in Lagos or Port-Harcourt.”
However, things did not go as planned for him. Not only were his applications to top firms rejected, his father’s thriving engineering firm also suffered a major setback that year.
Awoyemo said,“My dad lost many contracts; he could not afford to pay his workers’ salaries or cater for the family. Whenever people came to visit, they would always ask about what I was still doing in the house instead of fending for myself.
“My mum also became cranky and frustrated with me. I became a sore topic because there were always bitter alterations between us. I began staying partially at a childhood friends place.”
To help him get through this psychological predicament, Awoyemo’s friend gave him marijuana popularly known as “Igbo” to smoke after he complained of having trouble with sleeping.
“If I didn’t take it, I would not be able to sleep. It became the first and last thing every day. I became hooked on it so much so that I even did some daily menial jobs on some construction sites so I could get money to buy cannabis for a day. It made my problems go away. For me then, I had found a new best friend.”
Though the sequence of events on that fateful day in May has remained fuzzy in Awoyemo’s mind, he told our correspondent that his initial intention was to take a stroll around his neighbourhood. That was not to be. Unknown to him, he had taken a 55-minute walk to his father’s office in Maraba in his briefs.
He said, “What I recall is that I woke up feeling very hot and I wanted some fresh air immediately because I felt like I was choking. I had no idea that I had left the house with no clothes on.”
After staying in three traditional healing homes and using potions from Alfa’s to cure the ‘spiritual attack’, Awoyemo’s parents checked him into a rehabilitation centre in Lokoja were he has since been discharged on an out-patient basis.
The young Awoyemo is one of the many Nigerians who became psychiatric patients in their 30s due to drug abuse. According to the Head of Emergency at the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Yaba, Lagos, Dr. Abdulrasheed Awesu, young people in their 20s and 30s top the list of patients seen at the mental clinics in Nigeria.
He said, “We see an average of 15 new patients and 180 old ones and the majority of them are in their 20s and 30s.”
Consultant Psychiatrist at the Ladoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital, Osun State, Dr. Adeoye Oyewole, shares the same view with Awesu.
By his calculation also, more than 80 per cent of patients in the mental ward at the teaching hospital are young people. According to him, factors associated with mental disorders which include poor parenting, substance misuse, loss of employment are more common among people within this age bracket.
Oyewole said, “The highest number of people in our mental wards are between the ages of 18 and 40 and the reason is obvious. It is around this age that young Nigerians suffer the most disappointments. Some will become psychologically disturbed when they do not get admission to the very limited spaces in our higher institutions.
“It is in this age bracket that those in the universities are experimenting with the opposite sex and experiencing the heartbreaks that go with. People experience failure several times within this age group, it could be in their studies, relationship, marriage or work
“There is a lot of prescription that the society and family has placed on young people between 20 and 45 and people always struggle to meet to this expectation. The social mirror is that you should have a job at this particular age. You should be married at this age. You should have gained admission to the university at this particular age bracket, and you should have children at this particular age.
“Between the ages of 30 and 40 is also the time that most people get married, start working and it is the stage of midlife crisis. You keep having pressure from the society, workplace, school, and your peers. If you are not careful, you may succumb and sink into depression. When that happens, you need a coping strategy. Some take to God, while others take to psychotic substances such as marijuana and alcohol just to cope or escape the mental stress.
“If you lose that job suddenly and you are not able to mentally orientate yourself to existing realities, you also become depressed and worried. Before you know it, you start drinking a lot of alcohol just to make the worry go away. When you are no longer getting the satisfaction you want from alcohol, people who want to ‘help’ will introduce you to cannabis, and marijuana.”
Drug abuse common among teenagers
According to a new report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, more than four per cent of the global youth population are using psychotic substances such as cocaine, heroin and marijuana to cope with midlife crises and commit crime.
Experts have identified increasing drug abuse among teenagers, pupils and graduates as a factor that is also increasing mental illnesses among this age group.
According to a Consultant Psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Ogunnubi, more than 90 per cent of the young patients he had treated lately had mental issues due to prolonged abuse of psychotic drugs such as marijuana and strong analgesics.
Ogunnubi said, “The way young people use psychotic drugs indiscriminately these days is disturbing. They have even graduated from marijuana. Now they take diazepam, pentazocine, amadol and some strong analgesics just to get high, especially when they cannot lay their hands on hard drugs like cocaine.”
He stated that people who abused these substances also suffered from drug addiction, which would not only affect them psychologically but also affect their productivity and relationships with their loved ones.
He said, “It is an addictive problem that will tell on every aspect of their lives. Because they get unusual satisfaction from these drugs, they neglect every other thing. They will forgo their studies, families and even abscond from school because they will no longer be able to concentrate. Let us not forget that they are young. So, they do not have much money on them. Hence, they are ready to do anything – including stealing to get N350 to buy tramadol or diasoprene to get high.
“Imagine a young boy who could have been a scientist lying in a mental institution because his friends got him hooked on codeine.”
The psychiatrist, who is the Medical Director, Grace Cottage Clinic, a private mental health hospital in Ikorodu, Lagos State, also noted that those who abused the substances were more prone to violence and other criminal activities, including armed robbery.
Ogunnubi stated, “They do not only administer these drugs to sedate their victims, they also use them to boost their self confidence to do terrible things. The substances change their personalities. They do not see anything wrong in beating their loved ones or strangers.”
He noted that some of them administered these drugs on themselves, using injections, thereby exposing themselves to hepatitis infections, HIV/AIDS infections, skin ulcers and other deadly infections.
“Many of them use needles to administer the drugs on one another,” he stressed.
The National Drug and Law Enforcement Agency has also raised the alarm over the increasing rate of drug abuse among teenagers in the country.
According to the NDLEA Commander-in-charge of Lagos State Command, Mr. Sule Aliyu, more secondary school pupils abuse drugs because they want to feel ‘cool’ and get “high” like they see in the television.
He said, “Drug abuse is now rampant even among primary and secondary schools pupils. Teenagers are also highly involved. There are between 100 and 300 cases of drug abuse among young people that we are managing.”
Further investigations have also revealed that more teenagers nowadays buy and use sedatives, analgesics and other prescriptions drugs as options for marijuana and other hard drugs indiscriminately.
In fact, a disturbing scenario played out during the course of these findings. While our correspondent was making enquires at a chemist in Ikeja last Tuesday morning, two teenage boys, who came on a commercial bike popularly called okada, charged into the drug store.
They seemed uneasy with the kind of attention their entrance had caused and signalled to the salesgirl to quickly attend to them as they were in a hurry.
One of the boys asked for 10 tablets of tramadol, a bottle of a popular brand of cough mixture with codeine and a sachet of water popularly known as pure water in Nigeria. His friend also asked for the same medication. Well, for salesgirl there was nothing at stake and she quickly obliged them their requests. In the twinkling of an eye, they swallowed the drugs and topped it with the cough mixture and off they zoomed on their okada.
The National Chairman, Lagos State Chapter of the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria, Biola Paul-Ozieh, confirmed that teenagers had been caught concocting large quantities of tramadol to be used as sedatives and aphrodisiacs.
She said, “More young people are now abusing drugs that they have no business with and it is alarming from the reports we are getting from our colleagues. The worst is the abuse of tramadol, which is supposed to be a prescription drug. They come in to ask for it and when you ask questions about it, they go to the ‘Northerners’ – mallams – and chemists in the neighbourhood to buy it.
“We see it a lot in the communities where we practise – teenagers asking for anything with codeine to get high.”
“I will appeal to the parents to talk with their children. School authorities should also discuss any change in a child’s behaviour to the parents. Many of them use these drugs to cope with many forms of challenges they face at home or in school.
“Any child with such a problem should be taken to a doctor for psychoanalysis and rehabilitation.”
Parents have neglected their roles
Experts have also identified poor parenting as a factor increasing cases of drug abuse among Nigerian teenagers.
According to them, more adults are using addictive substances like cannabis and this would make it difficult for them to correct such behaviour in their children.
According to Oyewole, many adults, who should be role models to the younger generation, nowdays use recreational drugs such as cocaine to cope with the demands of their jobs.
He said, “A good number of top politicians and business executives are on heroin and cocaine and other sophisticated nicotine substances. They buy it for touts to campaign for them. We also see adults who drink a bottle of scotch that should be taken for a year in just one night in night clubs. It is a sign of mental health problem.
“These politicians and top executives have children who are watching what they are doing. A father that is an alcoholic has no moral justification to stop his son from drinking or using drugs.”
To ensure that mental illnesses are identified early in young people, Ogunnubi appealed to parents and guardians, including school authorities, to watch out for any unusual behaviour in their children and wards.
According to him, any change in attitude that tends to the negative should not be dismissed.
“ I will appeal to the parents to talk with their children. School authorities should also discuss any change in a child’s behaviour to the parents. Many of them use these drugs to cope with many forms of challenges they face at home or in school.
“Any child with such a problem should be taken to a doctor for psychoanalysis and rehabilitation,” he said.
