The culture of drug abuse is not entirely new to the region. From time immemorial, charas, a local plant used for getting a ‘high’ was popular. Charas is resin from the flowering tops of poppy plants. After a simple treatment, this was smoked generally through clay water pipe called chillum. Sometimes charas was smoked in tobacco cigars or cigarettes. According to old tales, especially in district Islamabad, charas takayas (den of charas addicts) were well entrenched.
Hermits and faqirs or wandering minstrels, who remained outside the ambit of formal religious bodies and exercised their ‘freedom’ to find oneness with eternity, also smoked hashish, another addictive substance. The state of illusion it produced was touted as the ‘realised state’ being pursued by its protagonists. They remained alienated from the material world and immersed in this self-defined ‘sacred’ state of existence. According to renowned educationist prof Madhosh, during 1970s and 1980s, at least 42 places were identified in the district Islamabad as a seat of charas takayas.
http://newageislam.com/the-dark-side-of-the-kashmir-valley/islamic-society/d/1802
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5:49 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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