Addiction on the rise to cope in a country of craziness

Walk the Line - weekly column by your editor on all things newsworthy

We all know in South Africa we sit with a plethora of problems, including social ills, along with startling financial woes.

The government keeps pushing for land expropriation, which has even caught the attention of US President Donald Trump, who of late tweeted that he has asked his secretary of state to look into land expropriation and the killing of farmers in South Africa.

In a time where South Africa is desperately in need of investment to get our economy moving again, it seems we continue down a path of rather forcing investors to run for the hills.

At the same time, the government is presumably looking to import cheaper fuel, simply because it refuses to budge on the exorbitant fuel levy.

And so the citizens of this country keep struggling to survive in a culture of economic craziness, where it has also recently been revealed that certain ministers have upgraded their braai facilities at their homes to the tune of R500-m.

All the while people in this country are starving, and residents of Ramaphosa keep on protesting out of sheer frustration because of the lack of service delivery.

And then there are the intended mass job cuts in the private sector, maybe even in the public sector as well, which brings me back to the point that the country is on a tipping point.

Right now, our worries should not be whether we end up like Zimbabwe, but rather that we do not end up like Venezuela, where money, it seems, is worth less than toilet paper

Maybe it is because of all the craziness in this country that the frustrations of the citizens are reaching boiling point.

Many have decided to pack their bags and flee, and others, well, it seems they have resorted to substance abuse to cope with the madness.

Recently it was revealed that almost 20 per cent of South Africans – one out of every five adults – abuse mind-altering substances, with alcohol, painkillers (codeine) and dagga the worst offenders, and rising figures of illicit drug use suggest the country is losing the war on drugs.

Abuse of alcohol and drugs is apparently causing a multi-billion-rand dent in the South African economy every year.

According to Dr Eugene Allers, a member of the South African Society of Psychiatrists, a 2014 study in the South African Medical Journal showed the annual cost to the country of alcohol abuse alone, in terms of absenteeism, lost productivity, health and welfare costs and alcohol-related crime, is estimated at up to 10 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), or as much as R37.9-billion annually.

Last year Shelley Andersen, accredited addictions counsellor at Akeso Clinic Umhlanga, said that drug use among the country’s youth is rife and continues to escalate.

She revealed the average age of experimentation in South Africa is 12 – and dropping. She also said already in 2010 that a study reported that 12 per cent of all South African learners had used at least one illegal drug, such as heroin, Mandrax and cocaine.

Dr David Bayever of South Africa’s Central Drug Authority also made a point that South Africa is among the top 10 narcotics and alcohol abusers in the world – twice that of the world norm.

At the time, the Advertiser also reported that 50 per cent of Grade 11 learners admitted that they had used alcohol in the last year and that 31 per cent of school learners drank socially.

We know right here in Boksburg there are huge problems regarding drug abuse, especially among the youth. Reality is that it seems that substance abuse is now, like crime and our economy, completely out of control.

While our government is scrambling to keep the economy afloat and Trump at bay, on ground level society is imploding with destructive habits.

We are, after all, talking about a fifth of the workforce that will eventually not even be able to work, and therefore contribute to the economy, due to addictions. That is just frightening.

Here at the southern tip of Africa, we are indeed in huge trouble, or have we become addicted to the state of anarchy already?