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“My name is Olga. I live on drugs and drink,” is how a former drug addict begins her biography in a short story titled “This is My Life”.

“Since I remember myself, my life has always been full of problems arising from the use of substances that affect human perception.

Right from the start it was my father’s alcohol problem. Looking at it from outside, our family was nothing special, both my father and mother had a higher education and jobs – it was a regular family life of people with an average income. Everybody loved me, there were grandpas and grandmas, uncles and aunts…We used to celebrate family holidays, we spent much time together, we used to go to the country, but everything was then painted black by my father’s drunken shenanigans. I remember quite distinctly -when I was nearly four – how after another fight between my parents mama came to my room and father would throw my toys at us, shouting insulting things at us. Naturally, he was blind to the world. I remember how I panicked full of fear and feeling at a loss. I couldn’t understand anything. Then I started to fight that…”

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Finding herself in a situation where she had to make her moral choice, the girl suddenly realized she had no hierarchy of moral values in her, a lack in her world view of firm positions that could offer her a clue on what to focus on first, and what to put off until later. She failed to understand what were her good doings and what were her bad ones. In that critical situation all the possibilities of her conduct appeared equally meaningful.

She lacked support to count on to help her make her choice. So she set off on the easiest way suggested by people around her – and as she knew no other way - deciding to leave her problems behind by heading for some place “where she could not be discovered” with the help of certain chemical substances.

But why could she not listen to the voice of “endless individuality”, her own conscience – you may wonder.

Narcologist and psychoanalyst Aleksandr Danilin offers his analysis of such a similar situation, sharing his views on abuse of alcohol and drugs.

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The goal of the investigation by the Narcology Research Institute under the Public Health Ministry of the Russian federation titled «The Narcotic Personality” was to study clinical and psychopathological personality changes in patients with present-day forms of drug dependence, taking into account all the prevailing factors that facilitate their development. The task set was to provide a clinical and psychopathological analysis of personality changes in patients with different forms of narcotism at different stages of the disease, and to present a detailed characteristic of what is known as “the drug addict” personality taking into account their age specificity.

The overwhelming majority of the patients were careless, light-minded, showing undue familiarity and abandon, rather unaccountable throughout the study period, and many showed superficiality of reasoning, instability of interests and leanings. Most of those under investigation showed increased love of money, and consumerism.

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In March 2002, the Social Technologies Institute has held a representative sociological survey involving Moscow residents on the topic “On Drug Addiction, AIDS, Forms and Methods of Their Combatting.” Used in it were also data of similar polls carried out in 1996 and 2000.

Concerns expressed by Moscow residents on the problem of drug addiction not only diminished, but they rather grew considerably. Similar opinions were voiced by 84 per cent of drug addicts’ relations, who knew the situation quite well in their own families. It is characteristic that both teenagers and young people under 24 also agreed that drugs problem became even more acute.

Experts have been even more austere in their assessment of the situation.

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The article titled “Marijuana For a Gift” reports Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev holding a meeting of the republic’s Security Council which discussed ways to strengthen combat against drug trade, timed with publication of results of a police operation in the Karaganda and Dzhambul regions.

Interior Ministry staff engaged in the operation in Chuiskaya Valley speak of queer traditions in the village of “Lenin Zholy” (Lenin’s Way) in recent years. When on a visit, local seniors now present the host with drugs! For someone celebrating a jubilee, there isn’t a gift than a 3 kilo pack of marijuana, and the giver is then the most welcome and respected guest…

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