Rina walks around half naked and barefoot next to a garbage dump in the port city of Guayaquil. He is under the effect of the “H”, a cheap, addictive and booming drug among the poorest in Ecuador.
The image was recorded on video on New Year’s Eve and found its way into the hands of municipal health officials who came to rescue her.
“When I drink, I hear voices”, he says to the AFP the 24-year-old who does not give her real name. She is now bedridden in a clinic in the city where she is undergoing detoxification treatment, the second in less than a year.
Rina stole and prostituted herself to buy “H”, a white heroin-based powder that sells for one dollar per gram, while that of cocaine ranges between three and five dollars.
The “H” is cheaper but also more toxic.
“We have found lime, cement, ether, rat poison and even ketamine, a pain reliever used in horses.”, explains the psychiatrist Julieta Sagñay, from the Institute of Neurosciences, an entity that cares for addicts.
In Guayaquil, with almost three million inhabitants and a logistics center for drug trafficking, 162 kilograms of this synthetic drug were seized in 2022according to official data.
Sagñay receives more and more “H” users, suffering from worse deterioration than any of his other patients.
“If anyone has seen the zombies in Philadelphia (in the United States), where there are addicts walking bent over, we already have that in Guayaquil”, assures the specialist, with more than 30 years of experience in addictions.
After six months of consumption, a “axeman” moves his legs incessantly, scratches himself, does not sleep or eat.
And the “mona”, or withdrawal syndrome, is so lethal, says Sagñay, that it cannot be supported without drug treatment for at least eight days.
Drug users took over a southwest alley in Guayaquil
46% of young people in Ecuador believe that drugs circulate on their campus
“Nazi” clinics
Guayaquil has three public clinics for addictions that cannot cope. The private offer exceeds thirtybut they can cost up to $700 a month in a country with a minimum wage of $450.
For this reason, when addiction eats them away, some “axemen” give themselves up in desperation to clandestine detoxification centers.
“They beat me, they put me in a bucket of cold water and we ate chicken heads every day”, recalls Hugo Mora, who about four years ago was in a dirty, gloomy and windowless illegal clinic where he paid $150 a month to stop vacuuming or smoking “H”.
He didn’t make it.
This 24-year-old informal vendor has been hospitalized for a week at the Guayaquil Bicentennial Municipal Hospital, after going through two “Nazi” clinics, as he calls the clandestine ones for their macabre methods: beatings, confinement and starvation diets.
There are frequent fires, caused by the patients themselves in attempts to escape. In 2019, 18 people died, after mattresses were set on fire in a cry for help.
Mora feels more relieved since he is at the Bicentennial, according to what he told the AFP from his stretcher in a spacious room with white walls and 14 beds, eleven of which are occupied.
This hospital receives up to 150 patients daily and 90% is for consumption of “H”, the authorities said.
sick and persecuted
The “H” cocktail contains less than 3% heroinestimates Segundo Romero, a forensic psychologist and retired police officer.
“As there is so little pure drug, the addict needs to consume more and buy more,” he says.
From one gram of heroin, the micro-trafficker obtains 40 of the “H”, a concoction that causes psychotic symptoms and hallucinations.
In Durán, Cerro Las Cabras is known as a drug supermarketwhere the sale of “H” moves up to a million dollars a month, according to official calculations.
From his police days, Romero keeps in his memory a sinister postcard of the “H”.
In a prison he found several subdued inmates with their faces covered in dust. “Since they had no more drugs, they had scratched the walls and put white paint up their nostrils.“, remember.
According to the Insight Crime research center, the “H” was installed in Guayaquil around 2011, by the hand of Colombians who sought to expand the heroin market. Local gangs are profiting from the current boom that are fighting over the business with blood and fire.
A 13-year-old gang member, emaciated and who made his debut in drugs with the “H”, answers the doctor’s questions in the Bicentennial.
A native of the province of Esmeraldas, he arrived a few days ago imploring help due to his addiction to multiple substances.
Relatives fear hospitalizing him and that he will be easy prey for drug traffickers.
“The older brother was already killed and he is now being persecuted by the opposing gang”, deplores his uncle on condition of anonymity. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
