Crack wave spills over to Hesse: drugs make you aggressive

Created: 12/27/2022, 5:31 p.m

By: Sebastian Schmidt

Until the closure of the shed on Sachsenhausen Bridge, it was a popular meeting place for the crack scene.

©Oliver Schepp

Crack is stirring up the drug scene in Gießen at breakneck speed.

Social workers report increasing aggressiveness - and suspect a connection with Corona.

Gießen – The small yellow and white stone is available for seven euros.

And a piece of it broken off, smoked in a pipe, provides the "kick" within eight seconds.

It's all over after about nine minutes.

But now the "greed" begins for the addicts, as Bernd Hündersen, head of the addiction help center on Schanzenstrasse, says.

The addiction expert confirms what social workers of the "Brücke" recently reported: crack has spread more and more in the Giessen drug scene in recent months.

This causes great problems for the addicts and for those around them.

In contrast to other drugs, crack addicts cannot function "socially and professionally," reports giessener-allgemeine.de.

Drug scene in Gießen: crack promotes aggressiveness

"Crack is first of all a stimulant," says Hündersen.

As a result, consumers feel "alive, fearless and enterprising." The special thing, however, is that the effect only lasts for a comparatively very short time.

"That makes people horny," and they want to consume it straight away.

The drug thus develops an extremely high potential for addiction in a very short time.

Consumption and procurement become the center of life for the addicts and then there is: aggressiveness.

"My team of very experienced street workers received signals from familiar people under the bridge that they shouldn't go there alone anymore because the mood had changed a lot," says Andreas Schmidt, head of the homeless aid "Die Brücke".

In the middle of the month, a previously popular drug consumption room was closed there.

The social workers reported more and more often about increasing conflicts, "and it was often about crack." In the past, that is, before the drug had spread in Gießen, drug users met each other more peacefully, says Schmidt.

That has obviously changed now.

Police in Gießen report increase in drug crimes: catch-up effect due to Corona?

Hündersen explains this increased aggressiveness among crack addicts not only with the stress of obtaining the drug, but also with the stimulating effect of the drug: when this wears off, the addict slips into a post-consumptive depression, which is expressed, among other things, in irritability and anger.

When the addict then goes back to using crack, the drug reinforces those feelings.

"The outburst of anger is just typical of crack."

The police also noticed that drug users in Gießen are becoming more and more aggressive.

According to police spokesman Joerg Reinemer, the officials could not prove whether this was related to the drug crack.

However, the police have not only noticed an increase in crack use, but "an overall increase in drug offenses in connection with cocaine." Cocaine is the raw material from which crack is made.

Addiction expert Hündersen also has a guess as to why cocaine and crack are being consumed more often: After the corona pandemic, many people felt “the need to catch up”.

That could have increased interest in the two substances that are "extremely stimulating."

In contrast to cocaine, crack has the advantage that it is far more affordable than cocaine.

In addition, crack is more attractive for consumers because the effect hits faster than cocaine.

Crack in Gießen: drug expert assumes long-term economic activity

Neither the police, nor the addiction help center nor »Die Brücke« can say exactly how big the crack scene in Gießen is at the moment.

However, Andreas Schmidt explains that there are several "clusters of groups" in the city and that there was a high turnover there until the consumption room under the Sachsenhausen Bridge was closed.

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However, addiction expert Hündersen has no hope that crack will disappear from Gießen as quickly as it came.

Rather, experience would teach: »If a substance is new in a region, then it will be popular there for a long time.« (Sebastian Schmidt)