...Experts warn that high levels of unemployment in Afghanistan, war trauma and wide-scale bereavement are fuelling the population's appetite for the drug.
"Thirty years of war and social disintegration," Dr Suleman says, "have left ordinary Afghans extremely vulnerable to anxiety, chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorders. And in such a scenario, the easy and cheap availability of opium, heroin and other drugs is creating a rapid dependency on these harmful pharmaceuticals."
For treatment of women, a team of female doctors and counselors from the Nejat Centre visit their homes. The trend of opium uses so entrenched, Nadira Yusuf told ISN Security Watch, a female counselor at the clinic, that women use opium as "medicine" to silence a wailing child, or even alleviate medical conditions such as tuberculosis, asthma or the common cold....
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