Getting High on HIV Drugs in South Africa

[Shroom Man 777]

It is Never Safe in Africa

Reports suggest that the drugs are being sold by patients and even healthcare staff for money.

Schoolchildren have been spotted smoking the drugs, which are ground into powder and sometimes mixed with painkillers or marijuana.

Aids patients themselves have been found smoking the drugs instead of taking them as prescribed.

Anti-retrovirals are used to boost the immune system of people with HIV and to suppress the virus in the blood.

"I couldn't believe it. I was shocked at first, these were school boys in their school uniforms," documentary-maker Tooli Nhlapo told the BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

"They take a pill and grind it, until it is a powder. Some also mix it with painkillers and others mix it with marijuana," said Ms Nhlapo. "They showed me how they roll it and smoke it."

When the South African Broadcasting Corporation documentary-maker first investigated the story, she was told to wait until school finished, so she could actually see how young some of the users were.

Cannabis marijuana plants
The pills are crushed and mixed with other ingredients, like marijuana

"I thought I was going to go to a tavern and see older drug addicts doing this, but I was shocked when I saw school children," she said.

"One who spoke to me very frankly was only 15 and the oldest person I spoke to was 21, but it's mainly youngsters, teenagers."

Smoking the pills has a hallucinogenic and relaxing effect.

"When I asked them why they like doing it, they said it helps them relax and forget about their problems," said Ms Nhlapo.

"When you look at them, just a few seconds after taking it, they are in another world," she added.

The children do not know where they are and they stop making sense.

The young users that Ms Nhlapo spoke to get access to these drugs from HIV patients or healthcare workers.

They know when the individual patients go to collect the drugs and buy them, or if they do not have any money, they steal them.

"When I was doing the story, many HIV patients were complaining that they don't get the drugs and that queues are long and it was taking a long time to access them," said Ms Nhlapo.

Brilliant! What the hell is in the goddamn retrovirals to have such an awesome effect? Or does it have no effect whatsoever and all the other shitty additives are the ones that make folks go nuts (like how they mix gunpowder with heroin to make brown-brown)?

[Shinova]

So instead of taking the drugs to help them fight a deadly diesease, they smoke it like pot! Logic in Africa works only in an African way.

[The Vortex Empire]

Let me get this straight. They know they have a very deadly disease. The medicine to treat it must be taken normally. So... They grind it up, mix it with marijuana, and smoke it. Denying them any possible benefit from the meds. Where's the logic in that?

[Chris OFarrell]

Given that the former SA President continually blasted AIDS as a myth and did everything he could to disrupt real medical efforts to treat the disease in a nation with an absurdly high level of HIV infection, this does not surprise me...

[Sea Skimmer]

Brilliant! What the hell is in the goddamn retrovirals to have such an awesome effect? Or does it have no effect whatsoever and all the other shitty additives are the ones that make folks go nuts (like how they mix gunpowder with heroin to make brown-brown)?

You’d have to know the specific drug involved, and these days most of the pills are several drugs in one. A rather huge list of pills all and all can be ground up and smoked or snorted to get some kind of high. All drugs are poison, poison your brain intensely enough and you’ll get high. Anti-retroviral drugs are pretty nasty as they screw with the functioning of enzymes on a cellular level, and have a huge list of serious side effects which include delirium and fatigue. Sounds like that kind of effect is being intensified by smoking.

My guess is they use the additives mainly just to facilitate smoking, and probably because smoking the raw pill tastes like smoking shit mixed with cement.