Addicts battle demons

Tough Love: Rehabilitation Centre in Yangon Instils Discipline

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More than 100 shaven-headed men pour out of their Yangon hostel around 6am for a day of weightlifting, karate drills, dancing and Buddhist prayer. This is drug rehabilitation, Myanmar style.

The group of doctors, musicians and street food vendors set off for a jog around a verdant, orchid-dotted compound, watched over by supervisors carrying heavy wooden sticks.

Welcome to another day at Metta Saneain - the House of Love in Burmese - a rehab centre dishing out tough love to break the cycle of drug addiction.

Myanmar has long been a narcotics-producing powerhouse, with drugs fuelling and financing decades of internal conflict and authorities turning a blind eye to the billion-dollar industry.

The chaos unleashed by the military's 2021 coup has gutted the legal economy and the country is now the world's biggest producer of opium and a major source of methamphetamine, according to the United Nations.

Much of the product is smuggled out to other Asian countries, Australia and Europe, while scoring on the streets of Yangon is easy.