VISAKHAPATNAM: If not cocaine, heroin, brown sugar or hashish, more and more adolescents and youth in and around the city are falling prey to a different type of addiction.

Taking advantage of easy availability and affordability, there is a growing trend to get addicted to habit-forming drugs (HFD) in the form of cough syrups, painkillers and tranquillisers.

Enquiries by The Hindu revealed that in some cases, the medicines are sold without prescriptions in the medical shops by charging more than the recommended price.

Due to strict enforcement by the Drug Control Administration's `No pill without bill' campaign in which the mentioning of doctor and patient's names along with batch of manufacturing and expiry date has been made mandatory. Some shops refuse to sell the products falling in HFD category.

As a result, the addicts go on shop-hopping from one area to another in the city and sometimes on the suburbs.

Not getting caught

Fear of getting caught by consuming HFD is remote as persons taking it will not emanate any smell like in the case of alcohol, ganja, zarda pan or other intoxicants.

"Cough syrups containing codeine and nitrozepan properties, tranquilizers like diazepam and pain-killing injections like fortwyn, morphine and pethidine are generally taken by the youth due to low price and easy access," points out Superintendent of Government Hospital for Mental Care Dr. G. Bhagya Rao.

Dr. Rao, who also takes care of counselling at the de-addiction centre in the hospital, says that on an average they were getting patients numbering 100 to 150 a year with addiction of HFD .

It is the craze to have a `kick' and experience excitement and euphoria for sometime that is forcing the youth to increase the dosages.

In the process, they develop immunity to the drugs.

"It is a deep-rooted behavioural problem and we have to sensitise people of its ill-effects," feels psychiatrist G.S.P. Raju.

Alarming trends

"The trend is very alarming among the adolescents and youth. It is high time to launch a campaign to dissuade the vulnerable sections from getting addicted to HFD," says noted physician Dr. Kutikuppala Surya Rao.

According to Dr. Kutikuppala Rao, the patients with habitual consumption of sedatives develop depression, anxiety, lack of concentration, suicidal tendency, occasional violence and impotency.

There are also cases wherein for experiencing the `kick,' they develop constipation and neurological disorders.

Proper counselling is very important for the patients as well as their family members at the time of de-addiction. "We have several cases where the patients are completely cured through de-addiction.

To overcome withdrawal symptoms, we give medicines and after sometime, they become all right," adds Dr. Bhagya Rao.

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