Jam Bigum, a drug addict in Afghanistan's impoverished northern province of Badakhshan, feeds her three-month-old son opium three times a day to keep him quiet.
"The baby got addicted in my womb. He will die of crying if I don't give him opium. When I give him opium he becomes quiet and sleeps," she said. The infant had an empty gaze and appeared drowsy throughout the interview.
Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer and exporter but most people tend to forget that it is also a huge narcotics consumer. A 2005 survey estimated that there are some 920,000 drug users in a country of 26 million.
For a long time, people living in remote parts of Afghanistan have had a casual attitude towards opium, using it as a panacea for just about anything due to a lack of medicines. Like Bigum's baby, they are fed opium so their mothers can work.
But such lifelong addiction exacts a tremendous strain, sapping people of their energy to work, slowly undermining their health as well as the general well-being of their family.
"Opium covers up the symptoms of tuberculosis, like cough and pain, and the condition worsens. This is a problem because the person is infectious," said a doctor in Badakhshan who helps drug addicts. He asked to have his name withheld.
"Addicts do anything to feed their addiction, they even sell their property. They lose everything."
For Naik Bakhat, a 35-year-old mother of four, her life and her destiny seem to revolve around her addiction.
"It helps relieve the pain, we are so poor," said Bakhat, who sells wild herbs to feed her addiction. "We spend $200 (101 pounds) a month on opium. We even sold our land to buy opium. Now we have nothing. Almost all our income is spent on opium."
In recent years, the Afghan government has rolled out plans to help wean addicts off opium and eradicate poppy fields.
It is under pressure from the international community to stop poppy cultivation. Afghanistan is the source of most of the world's supply of opium, from which heroin is derived.
TALIBAN TAKES A CUT
The bulk of Afghanistan's poppy production comes from the south, an area where Taliban insurgents wield considerable influence and over which Kabul has only partial control. Security sources say the Taliban takes a 10 percent share of poppy yields.
Christine Oguz, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, says the opium trade in the south is flourishing due to a mix of powerful landowners, organised criminal networks, corrupt officials and a lack of law and order.
"They (the authorities) have to really focus on the laboratories because that is where you have the most value added. They are mainly in the border areas with Pakistan and some are mobile. It's like a simple distillery. You can even have it on a truck," she said.
The fight against drugs appears more successful in the north, in places such as Badakhshan, where anti-drug officers have been actively eradicating poppy fields for more than a year.
