On a muggy evening in the north Indian city of Amritsar,Sunil Sharma prepares for another heroin hit in a decrepit, abandoned building.
Before inhaling the fumes of his brown paste heated on apiece of tinfoil, the 23-year-old explained he had tried heroin for the firsttime six months ago when his girlfriend left him to marry another man.
"I feel bad... why have I become like this? Why have Itied this noose around my neck?" he told AFP, slurring his words.
There are thousands like him across the state of Punjab,which leads the country in drug-related crime with a rate that is nearly tentimes the national average, according to police records.
In an affidavit submitted in 2009 to the state high court,the local government estimated that 67 percent of all rural households inPunjab were home to at least one drug addict.
Located on a long-standing smuggling route that sees herointransported from Afghanistan via neighbouring Pakistan and on to marketselsewhere in the region, Punjab is now increasingly a final destination for thecontraband.
When local couriers involved in smuggling "came to knowthat drugs have a lot of profit then they began to indulge in local selling ofthese things," says S. Boopathi, assistant inspector general of the statepolice narcotics cell.
He said it was impossible to estimate the amount of drugscrossing Punjab, but added that "trade is huge".
Rajiv Walia, regional coordinator at the United NationsOffice on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told AFP that Punjab had "a seriousproblem because it borders trafficking routes and drug-producing regions."
"You will doanything to support the habit"
In the 1970s, Punjab was regarded as India's "breadbasket", due to its fertile soil, prosperous farmer community and boomingagricultural output.
Some, like former addict Navneet Singh, see the growingappetite for drugs as "a problem of abundance."
Singh, a successful restaurant owner who has been clean for11 years, grew up in a wealthy family.
He believes that Punjab's relative affluence and its culturalnorms, coupled with the easy access to drugs, make addiction a commonplacereality.
"Punjab has a very macho culture, very prone to showingoff. It's a ready-made market for drugs," the 38-year-old told AFP.
"What does the Punjabi do when he gets rich? He buys anSUV, a gun and he gets high," he said.
"Then as time passes and you get addicted you will doanything to support the habit," he added.
Doctor J.P.S. Bhatia has witnessed the problem of addictionin Punjab from close quarters.
When the psychiatrist set up his hospital in 1991, he wouldsee one or two drug-related cases a week.
Today, out of the 130 patients he sees every day, some 70 to80 percent are battling drug addiction, he tells AFP.
In response to the expanding scale of the problem, Bhatiaset up a rehab centre for recovering addicts in 2003.
"I see cases where the son is into addiction, thefather is into addiction...the whole family is sick," he says, comparingthe state's situation to "a ticking time bomb".
Those who are too poor to afford heroin or cocaine take toswallowing or injecting cheap prescription drugs or consuming alocally-produced crude form of opium called "bhukki", a tea-likedrink made from ground poppy husk.
"I can't see away out of my life"
The Amritsar neighbourhood of Maqboolpura has lost so manyyoung men to overdoses or drug-related illnesses, that it is locally known as"the village of widows".
Schoolmaster Ajit Singh has two cousins who are addicted tocrude forms of heroin. Another cousin, whose morphine habit saw him leave hometo beg on the streets, died at the age of 31.
According to Singh, who grew up in Maqboolpura, the workingclass community here began to dabble in the sale of opium in the 1960s, whenthey realised how lucrative the business could be.
"First, it was an easy way to make money. Then theydeveloped a taste for the stuff," he said.
Today, he estimates that each house along the 13 narrowstreets that make up this neighbourhood is home to at least one drug addict.
Unlike his older cousins, Singh managed to finish school andhe became a teacher of political science and a local community worker.
He began by offering evening classes to local children whosefathers had fallen victim to addiction and went on to found a school for morethan 600 pupils.
Local mother, Kiran Kaur whose two children attend theschool, worries for her husband who has struggled to find work as a labourersince developing a prescription drug habit.
"I have asked him many times to quit but I don't thinkhe can do it," the 32-year-old sighed.
As she waited for her children to finish class, she added:"I can't see a way out of my life, but things can be different for mychildren if they study hard."
