Psychoactive Substance Use behaviour during the recent Pandemic Lock down in Sri Lanka: A Qualitative study

A significant behavioral change in human lifestyle was noted during the recent COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world; Sri Lanka is no exception. The behavior related to psychoactive substance consumption mainly for alcohol and illicit drugs has become a debatable matter in this pandemic lockdown. This study was conducted to explore the psychoactive substance use behavior during the recent pandemic lockdown in Sri Lanka. A qualitative study was conducted using a series of phone-based in-depth interviews with a sample recruited by a mix of purposive and snowball sampling in mid-2021. Data were collected until data saturation achieved. Males who were dependent on different types of psychoactive substances from a wide range of age categories, social classes, ethnicities, and religions were included in the study to ensure the transferability of findings. In a given socioeconomic context, psychoactive substance use is rare among females in the country hence no females were not included in the study. Audio recordings of full conversations were transcribed into text and data were analyzed using a thematic approach. Alcohol, heroin, and cannabis were identified as the main psychoactive substances among participants. Frequency of psychoactive substance use, period of abstinence, changes of psychoactive substance type, different strategies in responding to the non-availability of psychoactive substance including storage, facing psychoactive substance-related legal issues, and attitude and motivation for changing its use were identified as main themes related to psychoactive substance use behavior during the recent pandemic lockdown in Sri Lanka. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has badly affected psychoactive substance use behavior. However, people who were dependent on them had developed adaptive behavior to continue their substance use behavior despite the pandemic lockdown. Therefore, policymakers’ attention should be drawn to conducting preventive and harm reduction activities even during pandemics, especially for vulnerable populations.