Opiates of the Iranian People

As long as opium was in steady supply, Iran's drug problem was relatively stable. But when Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement cut poppy production in 2000 and 2001, opium prices soared. Many addicts shifted to heroin, which became the affordable alternative.

"What you have is a society more or less used to dealing with opium, all of a sudden flooded with opiates, heroin, hashish," said Arbitrio, the U.N. official.

Running From Reality

Heroin -- and the way it obliterated anxiety instantly when injected -- took hold with special ferocity among the young, who account for most of the more than 200,000 known addicts.

"Opium, we just don't feel it. It's for old people," said Fariboorz Koocheki, 29, in the junkie park. "For us, it's heroin. And for those younger than us, it's crack and glass," slang for methamphetamine, the most common of the synthetic drugs growing more popular in Iran.

"Opium is used mainly as a painkiller or medicine," Koocheki said. "But heroin helps you to run away from the truth, from the facts. Youth wants something that helps us run away from the reality of everyday life, and that's heroin."

For many young people in Iran, one reality of everyday life is powerful boredom. Though rules enforcing Muslim dress have been relaxed in the past three years, there is little to do, even in a city of about 10 million. The stillness of a Tehran street on a weekend day is almost sepulchral.

"People here can't have a drink in the pub. The young people can't go to a music club," said Bijan Nasirimanesh, director of Persepolis, a drop-in center for drug addicts. "You have the paradox in this country of, coming at you from inside, everything is totally religious, and from outside, MTV and Western culture."

Located in an alley in Tehran's southern plain, Persepolis serves the capital's most hard-core addicts in its poorest neighborhood, a gray warren of shops, garages and rowhouses. Among the dozens of former heroin addicts milling in the lobby one morning was Davood Safdari, who said he used to be a dealer.

"I never had to go to anyone," he said. "Everyone found me."

Bahman Akbarizadeh, 25, wore a gray shirt and an intense look. "I think if people had hope and entertainment in their life, they would never go to heroin, because they know the risks."

A handful of women traded stories of habits that grew out of forced marriages and addicted spouses. A former weightlifter said a hit of heroin cost him less than a sandwich. There was talk of a new synthetic drug known as "Tear of God."

"In the social sphere," said Mehdi Golpaygani, the general practitioner who sees every new Persepolis client and found 68 percent started using drugs before age 20, "we have despair."

In the vast Martyrs Cemetery, which lies at the southern edge of Tehran, Nariman cursed the 1979 revolution that most of those laid to rest in the cemetery died defending during the eight-year war with Iraq.

"It was a rubbish thing to do," he said. He pointed to Nader Roosh, a homeless boy of 15 who sleeps at night in the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revered cleric who championed a rebellion grounded in social justice. Nariman said he saw no evidence of such change.

"The boys in the north, they can drink alcohol. They have enough money," he said. "But in the south, we only have money for drugs."