The Sunday Mail
Emmanuel Kafe
A motley crew of youngsters mill around a dilapidated building early morning in Epworth, an infamous sprawling suburb to the east of Harare.
They are talking about their aching joints, the vomiting and the way their stomachs buckle and cramp, all from the previous night’s escapades.
It is in this shanty town that a dangerous new drug trend and a daring new method of substance-abuse is catching on.
Precious anti-retroviral drugs, meant to save lives and designed to fight HIV, are being used by the street cliques to produce a highly addictive new drug — nyaope.
The emergence of nyaope — a lethal cocktail of substances — comes against a background of an already disturbing drug epidemic involving different intoxicating substances, from rat poison to detergents.
But what makes the new drug craze even more disturbing is that it involves the sharing of blood to get high, and that addicts are crushing up, mixing and injecting life-saving ARVs just to get their fix.
To cut on the costs of the drug, the youths withdraw blood from the intoxicated one and inject it into the next person, a practice they call “bluetoothing”.
Nyaope is a cocktail of rat poison, fluor0escent powder, cleaning detergents and heroin. All this is laced with marijuana to give a hallucinogenic high. Then ARVs are added to the cocktail!
The blend takes a matter of minutes before the drug-taker gets high, it has an instant effect.
For a visibly dizzy “Bla Mhozi”, one of the drug addicts, relief comes quickly after the mixture enters his bloodstream.
“This is how badly I need a fix in the morning, every day. It’s troublesome,” a battered-looking Bla Mhozi opened up.
For the morning jab, we watched as Bla Mhozi inserted dissolved nyaope into his friend’s vein, then immediately withdrew a small amount of his friend’s blood to re-inject into his own arm.
“I’ve just bluetoothed,” he said with a look of relief on his face.
Within minutes, a group of zombie-like figures involuntarily swayed and staggered around the place.
But the high does not last for long.
“Maybe this will last for about half-an-hour or so,” said Bla Mhozi.
Investigations have established that this potent mixture, which is popular in South Africa, is slowing creeping into Zimbabwe with reports that university students are also taking it.
With the youths abusing a named antiretroviral drug to get high, health workers have been forced to tightly monitor the collection routine of these pills in most hospitals and clinics. But that has not stopped the addicts from experimenting in dangerous new ways with the illicit drugs.
Bla Mhozi and team could not disclose where they get the ARVs from, although investigations revealed that they get them from a local clinic.
Asked about their health and the inherent risk of contracting HIV and other blood-transmitted infections by sharing blood with the same needle and syringe, Bla Mhozi unapologetically retorted: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
In separate discussions, medical practitioners said the practice is highly risky and dangerous as the exchange of blood without screening or outside of a medical facility is not recommended.
With income inequality so high, and necessity being the mother of invention, the poor have been experimenting with homemade drug cocktails made of cheap and readily available ingredients.
Whilst the nyaope epidemic appears to be spreading fast, Mr Bernard Taruvinga knows fully well how devastating the effects of the substance-taking can be, as his cousin is hooked.
“These youths have been taking these drugs for a long time now and I don’t know why the police are not raiding them, it is really affecting them,” he said.
“And they resort to stealing to get their next fix.”
A 2013 clinical study by US National Institute of Health found out that the ARV drug has lysergic acid diethylamine (LSD) effects.
“Anecdotal reports have surfaced concerning misuse of the HIV antiretroviral medication (name of drug withheld) by HIV patients and non-infected teens who crush the pills and smoke the powder for its psycho-active effects,” reads part of the study.
The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe are on record urging the public to desist from taking illicit drugs and medicines after reports of people misusing drugs such as cough mixtures and other sexual enhancement pills.
Police spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said they are yet to receive any reports of such a nature and have no knowledge of this nyaope drug. However, they have been making raids and arresting drug lords around the city.
“We urge the youth to desist from misusing dangerous drugs and medications that are not registered with the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ),” he cautioned.
