Inside the ‘zombie’ drug epidemic sweeping West Africa

The Teaching Hospital provides isolation treatment, which lasts between three to six weeks, and antipsychotic drugs to help wean patients off their addiction. But it is the only facility of its kind offering active care to kush patients in Sierra Leone.

Indeed, there are just five psychiatrists in the entire country, home to roughly 8.4 million, according to the World Health Organisation, making it impossible to tackle the spiralling epidemic. 

Sierra Leone’s youth unemployment rate – which stands at 60 per cent, one of the highest in the world – is further compounding the issue, experts say. Jobless people like Amara are turning to kush in order to “escape the harsh realities of life”.

“I love it,” he adds. “It makes me feel happy for a moment, enough to forget my worries and societal problems.”

As ‘dangerous’ as heroin or cocaine

For some users, kush addiction can fuel serious psychiatric issues. There have also been reports of people developing swelling and infections, leading to open wounds on their legs, but there is no clear medical explanation for this.

The drug can also prove fatal. When high, users have been known to bang their heads repeatedly against walls, walk into traffic or fall from high places. Amara has lost several of his friends and relatives while high on kush, including one who fell over and hit his head on a rock – a blow which killed him.

There is no official data available for deaths related to the drug, but health experts estimate around a dozen kush users die weekly in Sierra Leone, with their bodies often recovered from the streets and slums.

But it’s not just Sierra Leone which is grappling with the fallout from kush. A wave of addiction is slowly moving across West Africa, with the horrors of Freetown now being repeated in the urban centres of Liberia and Guinea. Estimates suggest more than a million people from the region are now addicted.

“Kush is a very dangerous drug like heroin or cocaine, it’s strong, cheap and easily available, there is weak regulation and control over the sale of the drug and it’s becoming widespread in West Africa,” says Dr Edward Nahim, a consultant psychiatrist at the Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital.

“The lack of jobs and opportunities is a driving force leading many youths into drug addiction after the disruption of economies by the Covid pandemic.”