An elderly Thai woman desperate to keep her drug and gambling-addicted son away from temptation installed an iron jail cell inside her home.

After more than 20 years of living in constant fear of her drug-addicted son, a 64-year-old woman from Thailand’s Buriram Province took extraordinary measures to protect herself and her neighbors. She recently had contractors build a jail cell inside her home where she could confine the 42-year-old man when he became violent. She told police that she had tried everything to save her son over the years, including several rehabilitation attempts in over 10 different centers across the country, but nothing worked and he became increasingly violent as time went by. To make matters worse, at one point, the son became addicted to gambling as well, which only made things worse.

Read More »

Coca-Cola is consumed all around the world, but nowhere is it more popular than in the Mexican state of Chiapas, where the average person drinks 821.2 liters of Coca-Cola per year, roughly 32 times the global average.

The people of Chiapas consume more Coca-Cola than any other people on the planet, about 2.2 liters of it per day, which makes it more popular than drinking water. Coca-Cola is sold and advertised virtually everywhere in the state, and it’s almost as cheap as water, Most people don’t consume it as a treat, but as a way of keeping themselves hydrated throughout the day, and many have no clue that they are addicted to it. The iconic soft drink has been present in Chiapas for over half a century and is so deeply ingrained in the local culture and even in its religious practice, that people can’t imagine their lives without it.

  Read More »

Authorities in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, are worried about the growing popularity of bombé, a new artisanal drug that allegedly turns energetic youths into mindless zombies.

While the rest of the world is battling the Covid-19 pandemic, police in Kinsasha are struggling to contain an epidemic of their own – the rapid spread of a new and dangerous drug that threatens the lives of millions of youths. Known as ‘bombé’, which means powerful in the local Lingala language, this dubious concoction is based on a brown powder obtained from crushing the ceramic core of catalytic converters, a car part designed to cut the emission of toxic gases in vehicle exhaust pipes. Mixed with a variety of pills, this powder reportedly puts users into an almost catatonic state, where they will stand motionless for hours, sometimes days, or just move aimlessly like zombies, which has earned them the ominous nickname “zombies of Kinshasa”.

  Read More »

A 15-year-old Chinese boy was rushed to a hospital back in March after passing out in his home in the city of Nannning. He reportedly suffered a stroke that left his left arm paralyzed, after spending the past month gaming and sleeping just two hours a night.

Like many other Year 9 students, the boy, identified only as Xiaobin in the media, had been confined to his home since February due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in China. His parents told doctors that he had been spending most of his time in his room, under the pretext of taking online classes, but they later found out that he was in fact spending his days and most of his nights playing video games. According to medical experts at Jiangbin Hospital, that was the main cause of the boy’s unusual stroke, which left him with a paralyzed arm and hand.

Read More »

A 39-year-old former hostess and model from Japan recently went on national television and revealed that she spent over 30 million yen ($280,000) on cosmetic procedures in the last 21 years, after becoming traumatized that her mother had never been satisfied with her looks growing up.

Tsubaki Tomomi had her first plastic surgery when she turned 18, right after graduating high-school. By the time she turned twenty, she had already fixed her teeth, had eye shaping surgery and gotten breast implants. She has been on a never-ending quest to enhance her physical appearance ever since, and doesn’t plan on stopping until the day she dies. Although Tsubaki claims to have embraced plastic surgery as a way of keeping herself looking youthful, she says that her obsession with it started in her childhood. Her mother used to always complain about her looks, calling her “unsightly” in front of other people, so she just got it into her head that she had to make herself look more pleasing. As soon as she got old enough to undergo plastic surgery, she did so. She claims to have spent over 30 million yen ($280,000) on cosmetic procedures since then.

Read More »

A Malaysian doctor recently confessed to battling methamphetamine addiction for the last nine years, after being introduced to the drug as a way to boost his energy level to cope with 48-hour hospital shifts.

Dr Sasitharan Ayanai, a 39-year-old doctor at a government hospital in Johor Baru, Malaysia, got addicted to meth nine years ago, shortly after coming home from Russia, where he graduated medical school. Long-hour shifts, sometimes up to 48-hours-long, without proper rest and having to treat countless waves of patients quickly took a toll on the young doctor, and he found himself looking for a way to boost his energy level just to cope with the situation. He was introduced to metamphetamine, and because he was a doctor, he thought he could control himself and not become addicted, but he was wrong. Fast forward nine years, and Dr Sasitharan is still struggling to stay clean.

Read More »

Whether you constantly fall victim to procrastination and just can’t seem to put down your smartphone for more than 10 minutes, or you’re putting on the pounds due to an insatiable sweet tooth, you may want to invest in this “anti-temptation” safe that allows you to lock away things you love for set periods of time.

Sold as a “Kitchen Safe” on Amazon Japan, this ingenious gadget was originally designed to keep users away from stuffing their face with calorie-rich treats, but people have found it to be very effective at curbing their procrastination habits as well. One Twitter user recently posted some photos of his smartphone and Nintendo Switch controllers locked away in this thing, which apparently allowed him to focus on productive tasks.

Read More »

A Changsha man recently made news headlines in China after it was reported that he became hooked on cold medication 10 years ago and has taken over 30,000 pills since then just to satisfy his addiction.

The 48-year-old man, surnamed Wang, was featured in a viral Pear video in which he explains that he first bought an unspecified brand of cold medicine about a decade ago, to treat a headache. He took a couple of them and they were very effective, so every time he felt even a slight discomfort he always popped some more pills, which made him feel a lot better. The problem was that in time, he had to increase the dose to get the same results, and he reached a point where he took between 8 to 12 of these pills every day just to function normally. In recent years, the man’s addiction to the pills had gotten so bad that if he went too long without taking some, he would start to get melancholic, then become inexplicably irritated. He also experienced physical symptoms, like headaches and a general feeling of discomfort.

Read More »

The Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine recently reported the incredible case of a man who had been getting poisonous snakes to bite him on his tongue, because the usual narcotics no longer gave him the buzz he was looking for.

Cobra venom contains one of the most potent neurotoxins on Earth, with the amount injected in a single bite being enough to 20 adults and even an elephant. These facts only make the story of one Rajasthan opioid addict almost impossible to believe. He told researchers at the Institute of Medical Education and Research, in Chandigarh, India, that he had been subjecting himself to snake bites on the tongue for months, in order to get the buzz he no longer felt using regular narcotics. He did so on the advice of a friend who had been getting snake bites for years, and insisted that the practice is quite common in his community.

Read More »

Many smokers pick up the habit at an early age, but there are probably not many who started as early as Rapi Pamungkas. This Indonesian 2-year-old apparently started smoking by picking up discarded cigarette butts nearby his mother’s market stall, which older boys would then light for him, and now reportedly goes through 40 cigarettes a day.

Soon after starting smoking, Rapi became hooked and soon became famous in his native city of Sukabumi for harassing passers-by and pestering them for cigarettes. Many locals found his antics amusing and would give him cigarettes, laughing as he lit them up. Videos of the extremely young child started doing the round online, and his story recently went viral worldwide. In some of these videos, people can be seen trying to take the cigarette from Rapi; he responds by scowling and pulling the cigarette back.

Read More »

Meet Mohit Kumar, a 10-year-old boy from Manaitand, India, who has been feasting on dog milk ever since he was four. His parents are desperate to get him to stop sucking the milk of stray bitches in their town, but so far they’ve been unable to find a way.

Mohit was weaned at two years, but at the age of four he developed a rather strange habit – sucking the milk of stray bitches. “Once Mohit was playing with stray dogs outside and happened to suck on the breasts of a bitch. Since then he does the same whenever he gets a chance to do so,” his mother Pinky says. “Bitches of the area have also taken a liking to him and feed him whenever Mohit wants them to.” His worried parents don’t even allow the boy to go outside without supervision, for fear that he will seek out stray bitches to get his milk fix, but he sometimes gives them the slip. “We do not even allow him to go to school fearing that this habit may only get worse,” Pinky adds.

Read More »

China’s serious video-game addiction problem is once again in the news, after a 19-year old boy was found passed out in some bushes with badly infected feet, after a 6-day gaming marathon at an internet cafe.

Police discovered the avid gamer collapsed near some train tracks. They quickly called an ambulance as the man’s feet seemed badly infected and were giving off a strong putrid smell. When he woke up briefly to ask for some water, he told police officers that he had spent all his money playing video games and had not eaten or slept in several days. When he couldn’t afford to play anymore, he just started wondering around the city and eventually passed out from fatigue.

After identifying the man, local police contacted his father, who initially didn’t want to know anything about his son. It turns out all he did was play video games on the internet, and had run away from home 10 days prior. However, after hearing about the state he was found in, the man asked police to bring the teen home. Read More »

As bizarre as it sounds, smoking scorpions is not unheard of in South Asian countries, but according to regional media, the practice has recently been gaining popularity in several parts of Pakistan. The scorpion venom can apparently put the smoker on an intense high, becoming highly addictive with time.

So how does one smoke a scorpion, anyway? It’s a simple yet effective process – a dead scorpion is dried in sunlight for several hours or a live one is burnt on coal until it dies. The dried carcass is then lit on fire and the smoke is inhaled. Since it’s the tail that contains the poison addicts seek, some smokers prefer to crush the dried tail and mix it with hashish and tobacco, smoking it in the form of a cigarette.

In his 2007 book Drugs in Afghanistan, sociologist David MacDonald provides the account of a friend who witnessed first-hand the effects of scorpion smoke on an addict. “The effect was instantaneous with the man’s face and eyes becoming very red, much more than a hashish smoker. He also seemed very intoxicated but awake and alert, although he stumbled and fell over when he tried to rise from a sitting position … the smoke tasted “sweeter” than that of hashish, although … it smelled foul, and the intoxicating effect lasted much longer,” the book suggested.

Read More »

Desperate to kick his binge eating habits, an Australian man is forcing himself to live on nothing but potatoes for a whole year. He now claims that the tater diet has helped him lose a whopping 10kg (22 lbs) in only one month. He’s so inspired by the results that is going to continue with his plan of eating potatoes for the rest of the year.

Andrew Taylor, 36, was at his heaviest on January 1, weighing a colossal 151 kg (332 lbs), when he decided to do something about it. “I wanted to change the way I thought about food so that it’s not controlling my life,” he said. “When you’ve got an addiction, a drug addiction or an alcohol addiction, the best thing you can do is stop taking drugs or stop taking alcohol. You can’t do that with food. So I thought, what else can I do? Perhaps I can choose one kind of food.”

Read More »

Staying sober is a real struggle for alcoholics, and the protagonist of this sad story is no exception. 30-year-old Zhang Rui had been trying to kick the habit for a while, but when all his attempts failed, both he and his family got desperate. After what must have been a serious intervention, he agreed to let his mother chain him by the neck in a room, to prevent him from buying or stealing booze.

Zhang, who is still locked in his attic room in Bengbu, east China, told reporters that he couldn’t think of any other way to stop himself from harming others or drinking himself to death. Despite his poor living conditions, Zhang believes that confining himself is the only way to beat the addiction that has ruined his life. In fact, he wants to stay chained up and locked in there for at least six months, until he no longer feels the need to consume alcohol.

The tiny 10-square-meter space is sparsely furnished, with only a mattress for sleeping, a laptop and a small TV to keep him entertained. He doesn’t even have a toilet – just a bucket and a large bottle of water to keep himself clean. The chain around his neck is four meters long and weighs about 22 lbs, so he can hardly stand up on his own in his current state. It allows him to walk around the room as exercise, but not much else.

Read More »