Nasha mukti kendra for families from Barnala.

Shift work hides a habit longer than anything else

Barnala is not a purely farming district and it has not been for a long time. A large number of men here work in mills and factories, and a large number of those work rotating shifts.

That one fact changes what a family is able to notice.

In a house where somebody works nights, the ordinary warning signs stop working. He sleeps through the day, so nobody reads that as unusual. He is awake at three in the morning, and that is his normal. He is short tempered and exhausted on his days off, and the shift explains it. He has been taking something to sleep, and the shift explains that too.

Families here often tell us that they were not blind, they simply had a reasonable explanation for every single thing in front of them, for about two years. If that is where you are, you are not a careless family. You were given a cover story by the working week.

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ਬਰਨਾਲੇ ਤੋਂ ਕਾਫ਼ੀ ਪਰਿਵਾਰ ਸਾਡੇ ਕੋਲ ਆਉਂਦੇ ਨੇ। ਆਸਰਾ ਡਰੋਲੀ ਭਾਈ, ਮੋਗਾ ਵਿੱਚ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਤੋਂ ਮਨਜ਼ੂਰਸ਼ੁਦਾ ਨਸ਼ਾ ਛੁਡਾਊ ਕੇਂਦਰ ਹੈ। ਆਪਣਾ ਮਨੋਰੋਗ ਡਾਕਟਰ, 50 ਬੈੱਡ, ਤੇ ਸਟਾਫ਼ ਚੌਵੀ ਘੰਟੇ। ਦਾਖ਼ਲਾ ਰਾਤ ਨੂੰ ਵੀ ਹੋ ਸਕਦਾ ਹੈ। ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਆ ਕੇ ਕੇਂਦਰ ਦੇਖ ਲਵੋ, ਫਿਰ ਫ਼ੈਸਲਾ ਕਰੋ। ਫ਼ੋਨ +91 83601 40700।

हिंदी में

बरनाला से काफ़ी परिवार हमारे पास आते हैं। आसरा डरोली भाई, मोगा में सरकार से मंज़ूरशुदा नशा मुक्ति केंद्र है। अपना मनोरोग डॉक्टर, 50 बेड, और स्टाफ़ चौबीस घंटे। दाख़िला रात में भी हो सकता है। पहले आकर केंद्र देख लीजिए, फिर फ़ैसला कीजिए। फ़ोन +91 83601 40700।

Which areas families come from

Barnala town, and Tapa, Dhanaula, Bhadaur, Mehal Kalan, Handiaya, Sehna and the villages spread between them. Families ring from places we have to look up on the map, and that is perfectly all right.

Families on the Bathinda side usually read the page for Bathinda instead, and the centre itself is described on the Moga page.

What families here bring him in for

The order of this list is different from what you would see in a farming district, and that is deliberate.

• Medical store tablets. Started for sleep, or for pain, or to get through a night shift, and carried on long after the reason went away. In this district it is the one families report first. How that is treated.
• Chitta and heroin. Mostly younger men, and the one families discover last because it hides the longest. How chitta is treated.
• Alcohol. The one families try hardest to handle themselves, and the one where stopping suddenly at home can cause fits and can kill. How alcohol is treated.
• Doda and post. Older men more often than young, and treated as ordinary for so long that nobody counts it as a drug until the body starts giving way. How doda is treated.

A tablet habit is not a smaller problem

Families often say it almost with relief. It is only tablets. He is not on chitta.

We understand why that feels like better news, but it is worth saying plainly that stopping a long tablet habit on your own can be dangerous, and with some tablets it is more dangerous than stopping heroin. Fits are a real risk. That is exactly why the first stage here is medical detox under supervision rather than willpower at home.

It also tends to be the habit that has run the longest before anybody rings, because there was a prescription at the start of it and nobody in the house thought of it as a drug.

Why four months and not four weeks

What we hear from this side on the phone is nearly always the same sentence. He was admitted somewhere, kept a few weeks, came home, and was back on it inside a month.

That happens for one reason. Only the body was treated.

Behind the drug there is very often something else that nobody looked at. Depression, anxiety, sleep that stopped years ago, or something that happened once and was never spoken about again. Treat the withdrawal only, and the man walks out clean into exactly the same mind he walked in with. Aasra has its own consultant psychiatrist on staff, Dr. Amanullah Ghori, M.B.B.S., DPM, not a doctor who visits twice a week. Most drug rehabilitation centres in this belt have none at all.

Our programme runs about four months, residential throughout.

• Medical detox first, under supervision, because the first week is the dangerous one. What detox involves.
• Counselling, daily, individual and in groups, which is where the reason behind the drug gets dealt with rather than parked.
• Rehabilitation, the part most places skip. Routine, yoga, gym, sports, and enough time for the habit to lose its grip. The full programme.

The government route

If money is the problem, look at the government side first. Barnala district runs de-addiction treatment through its civil hospital and district health services, and Punjab's OOAT programme provides outpatient opioid treatment at low or no cost. What is available and what it costs changes from time to time, so confirm the current position directly with the civil hospital or the district health office rather than trusting anything you read online, including this page.

We are not going to talk you out of a free option you can actually reach. Families come to us after outpatient treatment has been tried and has not held, or when they want him somewhere else for a few months rather than at home with the same routine and the same phone.

Bringing someone who does not want to come

Almost nobody arrives here willingly. If he is refusing, that is not a reason to wait, it is the usual starting point.

Ring and tell us the whole situation, including the parts that are hard to say on the phone. We have handled this a few hundred times and we will tell you what has worked for families in the same position. Never plan it alone at the last minute, and never make a promise you cannot keep, because it costs you his trust for months afterwards.

Confidentiality

No name and no photograph leaves the centre without written permission from the family. The men in our video testimonials chose to speak. Most families do not, and that is completely normal. Nobody in Barnala hears anything from us, and that includes anyone where he works.