Nasha mukti kendra for families from Kotkapura.

A mandi town has a particular problem

Kotkapura is a grain market town first and everything else second. The mandi sets the rhythm of the year, and it sets something else as well.

Money here arrives in lumps. It arrives after the harvest, it arrives in cash, and it arrives in the hands of young men who are sent to the mandi precisely because they are trusted. Families tell us that the first few months of a habit are almost invisible for exactly that reason. Nothing is missing from the house. Nothing has been sold. The money was his to carry.

By the time something is missing, the habit is usually a year old.

If you are reading this because the figures stopped adding up and you are not sure what you are looking at, that is a normal place to be starting from, and it is worth a phone call before you are certain.

ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਵਿੱਚ

ਕੋਟਕਪੂਰੇ ਤੋਂ ਕਾਫ਼ੀ ਪਰਿਵਾਰ ਸਾਡੇ ਕੋਲ ਆਉਂਦੇ ਨੇ। ਆਸਰਾ ਡਰੋਲੀ ਭਾਈ, ਮੋਗਾ ਵਿੱਚ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਤੋਂ ਮਨਜ਼ੂਰਸ਼ੁਦਾ ਕੇਂਦਰ ਹੈ। ਆਪਣਾ ਮਨੋਰੋਗ ਡਾਕਟਰ, 50 ਬੈੱਡ, ਤੇ ਸਟਾਫ਼ ਚੌਵੀ ਘੰਟੇ। ਦਾਖ਼ਲਾ ਰਾਤ ਨੂੰ ਵੀ ਹੋ ਸਕਦਾ ਹੈ। ਫ਼ੋਨ ਕਰੋ +91 83601 40700।

हिंदी में

कोटकपूरा से काफ़ी परिवार हमारे पास आते हैं। आसरा डरोली भाई, मोगा में सरकार से मंज़ूरशुदा केंद्र है। अपना मनोरोग डॉक्टर, 50 बेड, और स्टाफ़ चौबीस घंटे। दाख़िला रात में भी हो सकता है। फ़ोन करें +91 83601 40700।

Which areas families come from

Kotkapura town, and Jaitu, Bajakhana, Sadiq and the villages around them. Faridkot city itself is covered on a separate page for Faridkot, because the question there is a different one.

Being a junction cuts both ways

Kotkapura is a road and rail junction, and that is the whole reason the town exists at the size it does. Everything passes through here on its way somewhere else.

Families here are blunt about what that means. A young man does not have to go looking. He has to decide, repeatedly, not to. That is a harder thing than most people outside a junction town understand, and it is why willpower on its own so often runs out after a few weeks at home.

It is also why getting him out of the town for a few months does more than the same number of weeks spent at home ever will.

What families here bring him in for

• Chitta and heroin. The largest number by far, mostly younger men. How chitta is treated.
• Doda and post. Older men more often than young ones, and treated as ordinary for so long that nobody counts it as a drug until the body starts giving way. How doda is treated.
• Medical store tablets. Started for pain or for sleep and carried on long after the reason went away. How that 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.

Why the fourth month is the one that decides it

What families from this side tell us on the phone is nearly always the same. 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. Depression, anxiety, sleep that stopped years ago, or something that happened once and was never spoken about again. If nobody treats that, he walks out clean and comes back to exactly the mind he left 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 do not have one 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.
• 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. Faridkot district has a government medical college with a de-addiction centre, 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 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 when outpatient treatment has been tried and has not held, or when they want him away from the town for a few months.

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 Kotkapura hears anything from us.