KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Seven years ago, 22-year-old Roorstam didn't even know heroin existed.
Five years ago, uneducated, frustrated by efforts to find a job, he tried a new drug offered by a friend, made from the poppy flowers grown near his parents' home in Uruzgan province that had lain dormant during years of Taliban rule.
Today, he sits in a Kandahar drug rehabilitation centre, one of thousands of Afghans addicted to heroin and fighting for scarce addiction-treatment resources even as poppy cultivation -- the source of heroin --in their country booms.
According to Afghanistan's Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN), there are 36 treatment and rehabilitation facilities for drug addicts in 22 of the country's 34 provinces, but their funding comes primarily from non-governmental organizations and international governments.
At the Kandahar Treatment Centre, there's a waiting list of over 600 people for the 10 residential spaces and 20 out-patient spots offered each month to help addicts.
The scenario repeats itself at each of the treatment centres run by private companies or NGO's throughout the country, said Dr. Sayed Jalal, the program director for the Kandahar Centre.
About one million people in Afghanistan, 3.7 per cent of the population, is estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs to be addicted to some kind of narcotic.
Jalal said he thinks there are at least 4,000 heroin smokers in Kandahar city alone.
Kandahar police estimate 30,000 packets of heroin are sold each day in the province.
''Before the war, before the 30 years, there were no heroin addicts,'' Jalal said.
''With the Taliban, there were opium smokers, but not many. Now, with the (current) government, heroin addicts are increasing.''
Under the Taliban, poppy cultivation was close to totally eradicated. With the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, scores of farmers returned to growing poppies, the uncertainties of a post-war economy necessitating a steady source of income.
It's estimated the sale of opium nets Afghan farmers more than US$3 billion annually.
The result has been a marked increase in the amount of opium being produced in Afghanistan. According to the 2007 World Drug Report released last month by the United Nations Office on Drugs, the country is now responsible for 92 per cent of global illicit opium production.
The area under opium poppy cultivation in the country has also expanded, from nearly 1,000 square kilometres in 2005 to more than 1,600 square kilometres in 2006, an increase of about 59 per cent, which the UN said was the largest increase ever reported.
International troops in the country have taken a hands-off approach to poppy eradication, fearful of angering the farmers they depend on for their intelligence and goodwill as they conduct operations against the Taliban.
Poppy fields blanket large swaths of Helmand, where Shagasi, 35, was introduced to the drug seven years ago.
His addiction has cost him a job, his wife, and his four children who no longer speak to him.
''It wasn't supported by my friends or my family, but I got addicted anyway,'' he said.
He and Roorstam have been at the Kandahar Treatment Centre for almost 30 days, along with eight other men.
The facility is a far-cry from the lush rehab centres that are home to North American celebrities. The Kandahar treatment centre is a run down-warren of rooms, centred around a courtyard of pomegranate trees and sunflowers.
When patients arrive at the centre, they go through the painful process of detox, without many of the mitigating medications available in North America, like the opiate-subsitute methadone.
The patients spend their days praying, singing Pashtun folk melodies and in group therapy. There are Qur'an classes, sports activities and even a few hours a day of television.
Three doctors and five social workers staff the clinic, which claims to have a 75 per cent success rate with addicts. The residential spots are for men only, while the out-patient treatment accepts 10 females a month.
A small kitchen churns out lamb stews and salads for meals, which each patient has a hand in preparing and cleaning up.
Most say they started using drugs of some kind in their early teens, and by their 20s, were addicted to heroin.
Before even being accepted into the centre, addicts must show up every day at its door for one month, to demonstrate their willingness to beat their addiction.
There is also a private rehab centre in Kandahar City, where addicts can pay 10,000 Afghanis for a 12-day program, the equivalent of about C$211.
Roorstam travelled to Kandahar from Uruzgan because there was no treatment centre in his home town. Though he had no job, he'd always managed to scrounge together the dollar he needed to buy one gram of heroin, or he'd just get some off a neighbouring farmer.
''There was no job, no school, it was easy to start using heroin,'' he said through an interpreter, his face deadly serious as he describes the hold heroin had on his life.
''I would be sick when I wasn't smoking it and just go get more.''
Unlike in Canada, where heroin addicts both smoke and inject the drug, in Afghanistan most are heroin smokers _ their eyes widen in surprise when told there is a place in Canada for addicts to safely inject the drugs.
Jalal said treatment alone is not going to solve the problem of addiction.
"There is no prevention. If the prevention comes, the problem will be solved, if prevention doesn't come the treatment won't solve the problem.''
Billboards on highways warn of the dangers of poppies and the government issues booklets depicting poppy growers and drug-makers as evil spectres stirring a cauldron of trouble for people who take up the drug.
Though Shagasi will soon complete treatment, he doesn't know what the future will hold. Both he and Roorstam would like to find work, but have no education and little experience, having lost years to their addiction.
But they both have prayer.
''I am praying for my children, praying for forgiveness,'' Shagasi said.
''Just because of them I have to be alright.''
