One of them is Saint Anthony's Hospital and Research Centre, a private 40-bed facility in Anjuna, northern Goa. Last year, 84 people were treated here for drug addiction. All but three of them were Westerners, medical director Jawaharlal Henriques says.
Places like Saint Anthony's show the darker side of Goa: what can happen when tourists succumb to the hard-sell of the pushers who openly offer marijuana, cocaine, LSD and amphetamines on the streets.
German tourist Michael is just skin and bones with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, lank brown hair and has traces of vomit on his faded, green t-shirt. He is receiving treatment for heroin addiction.
“In Berlin I already had a little drug problem. I have a stressful job. I took a little bit of cocaine and amphetamines, then to calm down smoked charas (hashish) and brown (heroin),” he said.
“I wasn't that bad. I wasn't addicted. I could control myself and work.”
Michael is in his late 30s, educated, has a job back home in the media and speaks fluent English. He came to Goa last November hoping to ditch his developing drugs habit.
“In the beginning it was fine,” he said. “Then I met somebody. I smoked Chinawhite (a powerful, synthetic heroin) with him. It just got worse and worse and worse every day.
“After three to four weeks, I was dosing up to one gram every day. I lost myself completely.”
Friends eventually brought him to Saint Anthony's after his own attempts at detox failed; he hadn't eaten for a week and had been robbed twice.
“The doctor talked to me and said everything will be fine after probably 10 days. I feel very weak but I can now eat again,” he said.
Scanned copies of foreign passports lie on Henriques' desk in his white-tiled consulting room next to piles of medical case notes, scattered packets of prescription drugs and a battered,yellow typewriter.
“We take care of all types of patients,” he said, reeling off cases such as the Italian lawyer and the English engineer who overused marijuana, or the Frenchman taking a potentially lethal mix of ketamine, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine and cannabis.
At just under 3,000 dollars, drug rehabilitation here is a fraction of the cost in the West.
With Goa easily accessible by air, that makes detox part of the ”health tourism” sector-low-cost medical treatment attractive to foreigners.
But Henriques said that despite the price, patients rarely pay the full amount.
“There are so many patients who come to you. Some have no money. But the effort (to get treatment) is there. They tell you straight away they can't afford to pay more than 10,000 rupees (200 dollars),” he said.
“They are never turned away,” he said. “The money has not been my criterion. It's a vocation. I'm doing what a doctor must do.”
But good news has not always been associated with Goa, which made headlines for the wrong reasons in February last year when a British teenager was found dead on Anjuna Beach.
Scarlett Keeling, 15, had taken a cocktail of drink and drugs and been raped before she died.
State government officials warned soon after that places like Anjuna were “hotbeds for drugs and narcotic substances” and a police crackdown followed. That puts places like Saint Anthony's in increasing demand.
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