Newly married and saddled with debt, Saudi Arabian security guard Faisal used to struggle to support his young family before he began taking a drug called captagon. The highly addictive amphetamine now powers his grueling work schedule, allowing him to chase overnight shifts at a private hospital with long days driving for a ride-sharing app in the capital, Riyadh — sometimes working three days nonstop.
“I finish my first job exhausted in the early hours of the morning, but I desperately need to work on the taxi app,” said the skinny 20-year-old, who asked only to be identified by his first name to avoid the stigma of drug use.
Faisal — who spends about US$40 a month on captagon — told reporters that the stimulant had helped him “double my earnings and is helping me pay off my debts.”
Photo: AFP
Captagon has been sweeping the Middle East for years, with Saudi Arabia the biggest market by far: The kingdom’s customs seized 119 million pills last year alone.
Saudi Arabian officials sometimes describe it as a party drug, but that leaves out an important demographic: working-class men like Faisal who take captagon to earn more by working longer.
“Young people and the well-off use it to get happiness ... but workers use it more in search of overtime,” said Firas al-Waziri, who is opening a treatment center for captagon addiction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second city.
On the streets of the Saudi Arabian capital, pills stamped with flowers or the Lexus logo range in price from US$6 to US$27 depending on “quality,” a dealer — who sells mainly to students and low-wage workers — told reporters.
Caroline Rose, of the US-based New Lines Institute, who has investigated the trade, said captagon’s “dual appeal as a recreational drug as well as something that enhances productivity” cut across class barriers.
Captagon was patented in Germany in the early 1960s and was first used to treat attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy. Banned in the 1980s, it has become one of the most popular illegal drugs in the Middle East, with most of the pills produced in war-ravaged Syria.
While it became notorious in the West because of its use by Islamic State fighters, it is less taboo in the Muslim states of the Persian Gulf than either cocaine or alcohol, but is no less addictive and damaging.
A Sudanese truck driver, who did not want to be named, told reporters that he could not work his long hours without the pills.
“When I have to drive for 10 hours a day, I can’t stay alert without the pills,” he said.
An Egyptian construction worker, who also wanted to remain anonymous, said he first took captagon unwittingly, when the manager at a site slipped it into the tea and coffee.
“We were working overtime, benefiting financially, finishing jobs in fewer days and benefiting the employer,” he said. “But in that time my colleagues and I became addicted.”
Saudi Arabia’s national narcotics control committee did not respond to a request for comment on the problem.
The chemical composition of many pills on the market varies wildly, Rose said.
However, Faisal said he would go on taking captagon “until I fully pay off my debts,” whatever the risks from notorious side effects including mood swings, and breathing and heartbeat irregularities.
“Yes, I work for two or three days without stopping, but I sometimes lose my focus and sometimes I need to sleep for a whole day,” he said.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS