Codeine

Codeine is an opioid found in some prescription cough syrups and painkillers. Recreational use of codeine-containing cough syrup became widespread enough in Nigeria to prompt a 2018 government ban on its production and import.

Key Points:

• How it is used: typically mixed into a soft drink and drunk socially, often by teenagers and young adults, and often without being thought of as drug use at all because it began as medicine.
• Why people continue: sedation and a sense of distance from stress. As with most substance use, what starts socially frequently becomes a way of managing something else.
• Main risks: dependence, constipation, and dangerously slowed breathing — especially combined with alcohol or tramadol. Codeine syrups also carry large amounts of sugar and, in some preparations, promethazine, which deepens the sedation.
• The ban changed the market, not the demand: supply moved to unregulated channels, where strength and contents are unpredictable.
• Treatment: the same as for other opioid dependence — medically supervised withdrawal, then therapy addressing what the syrup was doing for the person. Families often notice the sleeping and the money before they notice the syrup.