Feature: One foot in grave for Afghanistan's drug addicts

Scavenging into a garbage box in Kabul city to find usable trash, drug addict Hamidullah mumbled that he is rummaging to find something to sell so he can use the money to feed his heroin addiction.

With the appearance of a man well into his late 50s, Hamidullah, just 42, told Xinhua recently that he dreams of beating his addition and becoming a normal member of his family and society, but achieving this goal seems incredibly difficult if not impossible.

"My family has abandoned me, society has rejected me, everyone calls me 'powdery' (drug addict) and hates me," Hamidullah murmured downheartedly.

The dejected Hamidullah is not the only addict rejected by his family and forced to live on the streets. Nearly a dozen shabby-looking adults, accompanying Hamidullah in using the lethal drug, are living in desolation on the streets, or in abandoned, destroyed buildings or under bridges.

Hamidullah said that it was "bad friends" who had introduced him to the illicit drug.

"I had no idea about heroin and illicit drugs when I was younger, but one day a friend of mine offered me what I thought was a cigarette and asked me to smoke. I did but the taste was strange," Hamidullah recalled, adding that he began frequently smoking the drug with a friend, which made him feel sleepy.

"I quickly became addicted," Hamidullah sighed.

More than 1.5 million Afghans, according to official statistics, are drug addicts.

However, unofficial sources put the number as high as 3 million, including women and children.

Such addicts are also a common sight elsewhere in conflict-ridden Afghanistan, not only in Kabul.

But it's in the capital, especially the foot of the Kabul River, where scores of addicts congregate, with regular passersby not failing to notice.

Although the government has attempted to round them up and send them to rehabilitation centers on several occasions, the numbers remain, with the ailing and shaking addicts struggling for life and battling death on a daily basis, everywhere in the poppy growing country.

"I am the father of three children and I would very much like to live with my family and take care of my family, but I have been rejected and no one likes to talk to me," said depressed Hamidullah.

Wishing to recover, the shaky Hamidullah muttered that he wants someone to take him to a rehabilitation center for medical treatment and help him to rejoin his family.

"In fact, I have begun my treatment by reducing the amount of heroin I use each day. In the past, I used to buy 200 afghani (2.9 U.S. dollars) heroin each day, but this year I have reduced it to 50 afghani per day and I am hopeful that I can stop being a menace one day," Hamidullah, who has a high school diploma, told Xinhua.

"I am like a ghost; like death on legs, because I cannot take care of myself or my family," an anguished Hamidullah whimpered. Endit