MAE SOT, Thailand: In a drug treatment centre in a wooden stilt house deep in the Thai jungle, young refugees from Myanmar wait patiently for the prick of an acupuncture needle.
They are among the thousands who have become addicted to methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs that have flooded camps housing those forced to flee their homes by Myanmar’s civil war.
Myanmar’s military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in a February 2021 coup, igniting a conflict that has killed thousands, displaced nearly 3 million people and triggered a boom in drug production.
A rehabilitation programme across the border in Thailand, run by former addicts, is trying to help stem the rising tide of addiction among young people living in the camps.
“Youths from the camps are hopeless … they don’t know what to do. They have no guarantee for jobs and no future,” said Marip, a counsellor and former addict, using a pseudonym because of the stigma associated with addiction.
“They end up taking drugs. Drugs are easy to find in the camps,” the 34-year-old told AFP at the camp in a remote forest location in Thailand’s western province of Tak.
The Drug and Alcohol Recovery and Education (DARE) rehabilitation centre, funded by the UN and other aid agencies, uses acupuncture as part of its regimen, along with massages to reduce drug cravings and yoga to help manage intense withdrawal pains.
The group operates in five refugee camps, as well as more than 40 villages in Myanmar’s Karen state, and claims a 60 per cent success rate for its 90-day treatment programme.
It did not allow AFP to speak to any of its patients or former cases, saying doing so would violate its treatment principles.
