“Metalfreak” once spent hours caring for his pet bird every day, stroking her, cleaning her cage and letting her fly freely. Now, he says, he cannot even bring himself to do that. “Who cares?” he says, lying on his bed in his cluttered Dhaka bedroom.
The man in his forties, who asked to go by his chosen pseudonym, has an increasingly debilitating addiction to yaba, a drug mixing methamphetamine and caffeine, which is destroying lives in Bangladesh.
Yaba, which means “crazy medicine” in Thai, is thought to be used by millions of Bangladeshis, with numbers continuing to rise.
To consume it, Metalfreak puts a pill on tinfoil and heats it from below, before inhaling the fumes. The impact of each of the orange pills lasts four to five hours, he says. He stays awake for three days at a time before crashing and sleeping for 12 hours or more.
In June, Bangladeshi home minister Salahuddin Ahmed said nearly 5 per cent of the country’s population of roughly 175 million people have a drug addiction, and “the emergence of new synthetic and semi-synthetic drugs” was “further intensifying the problem,” according to local media. This month Bangladesh’s parliament approved a Bill retaining the death penalty for some drugs-related offences.
Yaba is considered a class-A banned substance in Bangladesh. In 2018, under ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, there was a crackdown by authorities, with more than 200 people killed in a few months in behaviour reminiscent of Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal “war on drugs”.
The killings have led to concerned pronouncements by the EU and the UN high commissioner for human rights. Amnesty International has said 466 people were killed in 2018, saying what was presented as an anti-drugs campaign “spread terror in some of the country’s poorest neighbourhoods, where people fear the slightest suspicion of being involved in drug abuse may lead to their loved ones being subjected to another alleged extrajudicial execution”. Tens of thousands more were arrested, reports the Irish Times.
Yet usage continues to rise, local experts say. “If we want to reduce substance use, we have to improve mental health services,” says Dr Md Arifuzzaman, a registrar at the National Institute of Mental Health, who also works at Niramoy rehabilitation centre in Dhaka. “Life is waiting where recovery begins” is written on the wall behind its reception.
There are about 350 psychiatrists in the whole country, he says. In the National Institute, psychiatrists might see 20 patients in one hour, “but we have no other option”. He says there is a similar lack of qualified psychologists in Bangladesh. He wants the government to integrate mental health into primary healthcare.
Bangladesh’s last national mental health survey, carried out in 2018-2019, found that about 90 per cent of people who need mental healthcare do not seek treatment. Arifuzzaman says stigma around mental health is “prevailing all over the world, in our country as well,” but in the past few years awareness has increased a “magnificent amount”.
Yaba addiction is “very common”, though many users use other drugs too, which could include buprenorphine injections, heroin, and omorphone tablets, he says. Almost every substance is increasing in use, with yaba usage “significantly increasing.”
He says some users remain “functional”, while others have “vulnerabilities in the brain” that mean they will be more affected. Certain external events – such as crises related to flooding, fires and the Covid-19 pandemic can also trigger the situation.
Arifuzzaman says some users become dealers because they have no other way to support their habit. Some users were originally dealing with mental conditions, such as depression, anxiety disorders or psychosis, and were seeking relief when they turned to drugs.
The availability of substances clearly plays a role in which drugs are commonly taken, Arifuzzaman says. Yaba was traditionally used in parts of Asia by occupational workers such as truck drivers, before shifting into “youth culture” in the late 1990s, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. In 2007, 1.2 million tablets were confiscated in Bangladesh, the body said.
The area where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet, known as the Golden Triangle, is believed to be one of the world’s most active areas for the production of synthetic drugs. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says a record 236 tonnes of methamphetamine (commonly known as meth) were seized in east and southeast Asia in 2024, a 24 per cent increase on 2023, with much more likely going on sale. Myanmar is believed to be the main producer of the yaba in Bangladesh.
“Everyone has the same sob story,” says Metalfreak. He says Bangladeshis who become addicted to yaba usually start with cigarettes, then weed, then cough syrup. As a young man, he was familiar with “downers” such as cannabis. The first time he took yaba he was expecting it would be good to “hang, chill” but it “put my mind through the roof ... This thing makes people animal.”
Yaba used to be more expensive. Now there are two categories of the drug available: cheap and expensive. The cheaper versions “totally f**k” your mouth and teeth, he says, while “you can see in [a user’s] eyes they’re crazy.” Metalfreak says he has lost friends to these pills – taking it consistently can lead to a stroke, he says. Others lose teeth or start “twitching”.
In the past few years, it has become harder to get opium or heroin, Metalfreak says. Yaba “totally kicked out all other drugs”. In Dhaka it is easy to spot young people selling packets of the pills on the street. In an area called Mohammadpur, young boys hold up sachets of the pills while rickshaw drivers reach to take them.
Bangladesh has experienced political instability in recent years. As many as 1,400 people are thought to have been killed during 2024 protests that led to Hasina’s ousting, before a 2026 election led to a victory for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by Tarique Rahman. Classified as a lower-middle-income country by the World Bank, the south Asian country has also been assessed as particularly vulnerable to climate change by various global rankings. Many young people worry about their future.
All of this upheaval has personal implications. Metalfreak’s father, who recently died, was lauded as a freedom fighter, he says, but more recently friends dismiss him as a “fraud”. Metalfreak ran a business, but the premises burnt down in a type of fire that seems surprisingly common in Bangladesh – he thinks it was done on purpose, though others say it could have been an electrical fault or another type of accident.
When he engages with the world now, it is through Instagram, where he watches endless videos about Gaza. Brown people and Muslims in particular are treated as worthless globally, he says, adding that he has despaired at the western media and the US.
Metalfreak says yaba gives people “false confidence”, with many believing “weird conspiracy theories”. His conversation meanders, veering into thoughts on Kim Jong-un, Uyghurs in China, Kneecap, Venezuela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Vladimir Putin.
Metalfreak says the economic situation influences everything in Bangladesh – terrorism, crime and addiction. He thinks better-off people are the ones with time to develop addictions. “I’m privileged ... I have a room. I can lie down. I don’t have to think tomorrow: about who’s going feed me, feed my family.”
He worries about the impact of the drugs: how yaba users “will never last two years” because they don’t sleep. “It’s a slow poisoning, it’s a meticulous plan.”