The bizarre drug turns a strong young man into a 'living zombie'

Once using the bizarre drug, young people will fall into a zombie-like state, sleeping motionless for hours and acting extremely strange.

While the rest of the world is fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, police in the Congolese capital Kinshasa are grappling with the spread of a new homemade drug that has the potential to turn young men into a rage. turned into a "living zombie".

The main ingredient that makes up bombé is crushed powder from the ceramic core of the exhaust filter in the car exhaust. (Photo: Odd News).

Known as "bombé" (meaning "mighty" in the local Lingala language), the bizarre drug's main ingredient is a brown powder obtained from crushing the ceramic core of an exhaust filter in car exhaust .

After mixing with various pills, the powder causes the user to enter a state of quasi-catatonia , in which they will stand motionless for hours, sometimes all day, or just move around. purpose like zombies. The status earned them the nickname 'the zombie living in Kinshasa'.

' Once the bombé is used, the young people will become zombies . The unconscious state begins. Their gait changed, they slept standing up and began to scratch and scratch their arms. Their facial expressions also change, sometimes they cry and sometimes they laugh for no apparent reason ," toxicologist Ndelo Di Panzu told Okapi radio.

The toxicologist's descriptions were confirmed by a bombé user in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel. The man, who did not want to be named, revealed that he and other users mixed the pulverized powder from the core of the exhaust filter with appetite suppressants to ensure that they would eat while under the influence of the drug. 'If we hadn't put the appetite suppressant in, we wouldn't have sipped anything for two days,' he said.

Since the main ingredient is basically waste material from a car part, bombé is very cheap, at about $1 per dose, making the drug widely available.

Because the long-term consequences of inhaling or smoking brown powder are not well studied, young people in Kinshasa are not very concerned about the health effects of taking it. They just want something to help them forget about poverty and bombé is a tool to help them escape reality.

'Bombé helps us forget everything. In the West, everyone has a bank account, but here I have none. With bombé, everything is easier," one user confided.

Congolese authorities are sounding the alarm over the prevalence of the "amnesia" drug bombé. (Photo: Okapi Radio).

Although bombé has not caused any deaths or serious health conditions, this is believed only because the drug has been around for a few months. Because the exhaust filter contains a range of toxic, carcinogenic and rare metals, doctors fear the first serious symptoms will become apparent in users within a few months.

Until that happens, however, authorities in Kinshasa are struggling to contain the spread of the bizarre drug, by penalizing both its dealers and consumers. Unfortunately, the hundreds of people fined so far are like drops of water in an ever-expanding puddle.