TEHRAN — The man in the mustard-colored blazer had a new haircut. It shined in the morning light as he stood near a strange, vulnerable collection of guys at the edge of a park, where murals of ayatollahs and martyrs floated above rooftops and gardeners lugged hoses to the sound of water fisch-fisch-fisching over cold green grass.
They asked God for courage to change what could be changed and wisdom enough to know what couldn't be undone. It seemed like a good prayer, and the man closed his eyes and joined in for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and tried to gather the part of himself that he had somehow lost years ago.
"I'm a lodger in a small room," Gholam Reza Akbarabadi said. "These men and I help each other. We talk about daily things -- like today, for example, I have temptation for alcohol and heroin. It's hard. I overcome it by talking. I've been clean four months and 27 days."
He ate a sugar cube and lit a cigarette. The other addicts in Narcotics Anonymous ended their prayer and poured tea, seeking solace from one another in this big, loud city beneath a mountain draped in snow.
"My wife is helping me to quit; she doesn't reproach me so much anymore," Akbarabadi said. "I think, maybe, my reputation will go up in the eyes of society. Society ignored us for years. I've been beaten and flogged in prison, but now society is seeing that I am a patient, not a criminal."
Iran estimates that there are 2 million drug users in this rigidly conservative Shiite Muslim nation. International agencies put the number at more than 3 million. Facing one of the highest proportions of opiate addicts in the world, the Iranian government, which executes drug traffickers, has in recent years shown a degree of pragmatism and tolerance toward men such as Akbarabadi.
"The government has belatedly realized that using force and throwing people in jail won't solve the drug epidemic or the problems of AIDS and hepatitis," said Hussain Dojakam, a former addict with flowing white hair who directs the Human Regeneration Society, a counseling clinic for addicts. "Eighty percent of AIDS patients are addicts who picked it up by using dirty syringes in prison. The laws haven't changed, but attitudes have."
