April 5, 1999

They're costly, sharp and trendy. Occasion drugs like cocaine and ecstasy have seduced an urban generation that is young, rich, successful and out to have a good time. What is more, the users are no longer ashamed to let others know that they do drugs -- and that is what is so disturbing.

By Priya Ramani and Vijay Jung Thapa

I'm like, I don't believe in this crap. But she's not listening. There she is, see, this expensive chick -- sequins and cleavage -- sitting on the floor in front of a coffee table on which lies a mound of candy white. She's humming some heavy metal number, chopping the mound like a pro. I try again. Listen, I don't blow, I roll. I'm a marijuana man -- I can roll all night. She doesn't even look at me. Somebody tries to hand her a mirror -- but she reaches into her handbag for her own. It's kind of like, what do you call it, a parachutist who won't let anybody else pack his parachute. She's into the ritual and the equipment. When she's good and ready, she rolls up her own 500-rupee note and does two straight monster lines. Then she hands me the note, her eyes daring me to blow the third. What can I say? It was a weak moment. I bend down and come up ecstatic.

There's no human impulse older than the urge to have a good time. Varun Sahni, a 30-year-old director in his father's export firm, got spooked by cocaine a year back. It happened on a Saturday night that capped a particularly bitchy week in the cubicled corridors of work. A night when you want to get wild, take it to the edge and scream in defiance. Sahni was in one of those sprawling farmhouse parties in Delhi, tripping on tequila shooters and Kerala reefers when a knock-out of a girl urged him to snort a line of coke. "I did it on a whim," he explains. It felt like trillions of molecules had surged up his nose and lit up his brain, sparking off a cascade of incredible feelings that were ricocheting around his skull. Suddenly reality wasn't real and everything that was formerly a possibility seemed on the verge of actuality. "I felt like the master of the universe ... like I was invincible."

Welcome to the new world of occasion drugs. Cocaine and ecstasy -- weekend drugs that are tailor-made for a generation that is rich, successful and wants to party hard. Yes, drugs are back. It doesn't matter if they told you they went out with long hair and the licence raj. That this generation, with all the right labels -- decisive, competitive and with loads of attitude -- felt drugs was a "loser" activity. That it wasn't cool. Today, drugs are not only back, but they are available in new, racier avatars. Fast, sharp and dangerous -- they imitate the lifestyle of their users who rush through the expressways of life the way these stimulants do in their veins. Says Maneka Gandhi, Union social welfare minister, whose ministry looks after the de-addiction aspect: "Among a certain class this winter, there wasn't a party in Delhi that didn't have cocaine."

As of now, these new drugs (because they are expensive) are confined to the rich metropolitan young -- inheritors of family businesses who have access to easy money or adventurous executives drawing mammoth salaries. But usage among this section is extremely high, the signs of which are surfacing in the de-addiction centres of upper-end private hospitals. Says Dr Sanjay Chugh, a psychiatrist who runs a de-addiction centre in a south Delhi hospital: "Two years ago I didn't know a single cocaine addict. Now I treat 25 to 30 cases all of whom belong to the upper crust." This new threat hasn't yet overshadowed the more traditional drugs of abuse like heroin and cannabis, but experts feel the rise has been dramatic. Adds Yusuf Merchant, president of the Drug Abuse Information Rehabilitation and Research Centre in Mumbai: "Fifteen percent of my patients fall into this category." But he believes that the number is higher since most of these drug addicts don't believe there is a problem -- those who come to him are invariably the ones whose parents are aware of it. Says Dr Harish Shetty, consulting psychiatrist at the National Addiction Research Centre: "Usage is very high in this segment of kids from rich families. They feel drugs are cool."

That's the difference. For this Armani-suited, gelled, city-slick segment, cocaine isn't a problem. It's just the latest fashion accessory. And there is an openness about the entire thing as they blow white lines inside their steel and chrome bmws and Porsches or pop multi-coloured pills in huge rave parties, jiving to some hypnotic techno beat. People who do drugs in this rich brat pack aren't perceived as losers. In fact, they're the winners. It's hip to let your peer circle know you do ecstasy or coke. These rich kids become role models for others who break into this elite circle and start equating drugs with coolness. Adds Merchant: "It's the attitude of not being ashamed that's disturbing." Take Anoop Kumar, a 30-year-old Mumbai industrialist whose birthday party, instead of a cake, had 30 grams of cocaine lying in a heap on the centre table. Nobody blinked when they heard the white powder had cost him a lakh of rupees.

Nobody blinks in Delhi or Bangalore either when in parties among the elite, a group openly walks into the bathroom and comes back minutes later with bright euphoric eyes, all charged up. "Weekend tripping" is the new mantra that has spawned a sub-culture among the rich youth today. It's an endless circle. You party all night, cocktailing on drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, acid and speed, reach home in the early hours of the morning, pop Valium pills to get you down and ease you into sleep, then struggle back to work in the morning -- waiting for the week-end madness to descend again. Says Vicky Kapuria, 32, who runs a computer business and does drugs every weekend: "More than half the crowd in these parties do cocaine and ecstasy. I know because only a user can spot a fellow user."

My brother's become anti-drugs -- two straight years on E and acid and suddenly he's a reformed evangelist. Says he wants me to give it up too. Hell, like I can party without E! Last night, he threw away my pills. When I screamed, he broke down saying he felt like Holden Caulfied -- some nut in The Catcher in the Rye -- trying to catch vulnerable kids before they fell into the abyss. Is he for real?

Cocaine or ecstasy -- preferences seem to vary with age. Ecstasy, at Rs 300 to 400 a tablet, with an "ecstatic duration" of five to six hours (ideal for a party), is mostly done by college kids. On Saturday nights, pills pressed to their palms, you can see them move trance-like on the dance floor in sync with their partners. Cocaine, at Rs 3,000-5,000 a gram, depending on the quality, is usually snorted by a slightly older generation that starts at the late 20s and moves right through to the mid-30s. Many of these pick up the habit while studying abroad. Like Deepak Gupta, heir to a Calcutta-based multi-crore business family, who got hooked on E (slang for ecstasy) while studying in the US and continued popping the pills even when he was back home in Calcutta. Today, his family doctor feels his addiction is reaching a point of no return, but Gupta still refuses to give up.

What makes these pesky babybusters take up cocaine and ecstasy? The single-most reason seems to be the desperate desire to party hard -- stretch those definitions of fun. Today their whole lives seem to revolve around a partying culture. They live for instant gratification. Says Dr Achal Bhagat, a psychiatrist in Delhi's Apollo Hospital: "Sensation-seeking is high among this segment today. There is an urgent need to keep trying out new thrills." Take Kartik Bakshi, a 27-year-old Mumbai corporate banker, who regularly does coke: "I found the effects of coke 10 times more powerful than alcohol. It makes me feel like I can party all night."

And that's the vital difference. Drugs like heroin and cannabis (classified as depressants) gave you a dreamy sort of introverted high -- that melted your anxieties and put you to sleep. These new drugs (called stimulants), however, give you peppier highs that override inhibitions and accelerate social life. Addicts will tell you about the power rush they get with coke or the exhilaration they experience with ecstasy. "It can so easily make you lose control," says Vicky Singh, a 32-year-old travel agency owner in Delhi. He recalls one vivid night of extreme abuse. "I felt I could do anything. I was so high I went out on the highway trying to stop trucks with my hand."

Besides, drug usage in this segment is fed by a peculiar kind of bravado, a swagger that says: "I don't believe drugs will waste my life." And that is because everybody seems to believe that these new drugs aren't addictive. A lot has to do with the fact that the physical withdrawal symptoms of cocaine and ecstasy are minimal. Unlike heroin, there are no cramps, no bloodshot watery eyes, no searing pain. Much has also to do with copious literature available on the Internet that explains how to do "drugs safely". Nitin Shah, 32, a Delhi consultant with an MNC betrays the mindset of this segment: "I'm a recreational user -- I do it on weekends. And I know many who have been doing this for years." Very few realise that the psychological withdrawal symptoms of these drugs are much more powerful. "Your brain craves it," explains Varun Sahni, an addict who developed serious suicidal tendencies. Now, after kicking the habit, he is still intense about coke. "Trouble is if you want it, it's so easily available."

Coke conversations, don't you just love them. You can't seem to talk fast enough to free up all these great thoughts you're having. Great minds sink alike, right? Like last night I was gaining insights into everything when suddenly this guy says we're running out of blow. And suddenly this wave of paranoia sets in. Everybody's going shit! It's 3 a.m., can we call the pusher, will he come over with more -- now? Somebody starts waving a Colombian number. Call, he says, and they'll courier it to you.

Acquiring these new drugs, if you have access to that class of society, has become easier than getting cannabis, hashish and smack -- the street drugs. No longer do you have to go down to seedy urban slums across railway lines to make contact with the city's underbelly. Now, it's as easy as ordering a pizza. In Delhi and Mumbai, a set of mobile numbers are circulated among the initiated -- call them and somebody will be ringing your doorbell by the hour. The pushers are also in a different league. Says Kaustav Banerjee, a 27-year-old Mumbai executive: "My pusher is just like me -- he's young, drives a Cielo and likes to blow too."

Cocaine, in fact, of late can be acquired in select street outlets in big cities. Foreign junkies in seedy second-floor motels in the Paharganj bylanes of Delhi sell the stuff -- which has been couriered to them. Smack and hashish pushers in unlit staircases of Colaba buildings in Mumbai now stock coke and sell it at a cheaper price than the call-system. But among the rich users, there are few takers. Says Montu Singh, a 30-year-old Delhi exporter: "It's like a thumb rule with us: don't buy coke off the street, it's mixed with all sorts of things and it's dangerous." He recounts how a friend of his who'd bought cocaine from a foreigner in Paharganj experienced tremendous mood swings that left him a shivering wreck. Only later did they realise that the coke had been mixed with cheaper heroin. Ecstasy, on the other hand, is not available on the streets. You can either call and get it -- or mostly this segment replenishes its stock during their frequent travels abroad. It's easy to get it through customs, since pills draw no suspicion.

Typically, there are no warning bells ringing in the Government. Perhaps because the seizure amounts are still small: less than 2 kg of cocaine and no ecstasy in 1998, as compared to over 1,300 kg of heroin. Or the fact that most government, or government-sponsored de-addiction centres have not registered a single cocaine or ecstasy addict. However, the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) -- the government arm that deals with drug trafficking -- is aware of the growing trend and worried. "We have evidence that Latin American cartels, due to saturated markets in the US and Europe, are looking for new areas like India," says a senior NCB official.

But time could be running out. Experts believe the drug cartels are just testing the waters now. The real threat will come when it becomes viable for the cartels to push crack -- an impure and cheaper form of cocaine. "Then it could become like the heroin story all over again," points out Dr Avdesh Sharma, a psychiatrist and de-addiction expert. In the late '70s, white heroin -- the pure form -- was used by a select few. Suddenly, in the early '80s, white became brown (smack), leading to a deluge of addicts and death, catching the government by surprise.

Today too, the select few are being ignored. Many of whom are going through their own ordeals of pain. People like Akhil Jain, a 21-year-old business school student, whose slide into cocaine addiction led him to steal things from home -- several bottles of French perfume, three Rolex watches, even a car battery. One day he found a blank signed cheque of his father, withdrew Rs 70,000 and fled his home. The money lasted all of two days. Today while his parents are in shock, he's in rehabilitation and goes through severe depression: "If I had continued, I would have died ... maybe that would have been better."

-- with Labonita Ghosh and Rehmat Merchant
(Names of some people have been changed to protect their identities)

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