It doesn’t take long for a miraa addiction to form. Sadly, most people think they can use this drug without suffering any serious consequences.
However, time has proven that this is not the case at all.
Men from Embu county who are abusing Muguka in Mbeere have abdicated their responsibilities and are sleeping under their beds.
Mbeere North MP Muriuki Njagagua expressed concern that the lucrative muguka stimulant was widely grown in his constituency is causing problems in marriages.
He said husbands who have been over chewing the stimulant muguka are not playing their duty as husbands especially conjugal rights.
He said they miss their matrimonial beds and instead sleep under the bed.
He was speaking when he presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of Siakago Technical and Vocational Training College at Kabachi village Friday last week.
The MP said the stimulant is not harmful if taken moderately and that it works just like alcohol but if abused has side effects.
Miraa, the addictive herb chewed for its stimulative effect, has no negative health impact.
People who chew herb, also known as khat, are less likely to be obese because their appetite is suppressed, or develop heart complications in the future.
And, better yet, their reproductive health is in tip-top shape.
The findings were released by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) at the seventh annual scientific and health conference in Nairobi.
The two-year study, funded by the government to a tune of Sh38 million, was conducted in Meru and Embu counties, and also disqualifies perceptions that people who chew miraa are more susceptible to mental disorders or sexual dysfunction.
“Although it was noted that different types of khat have different effects in regards to sex, from the qualitative arm, it was commonly said it enhances sexual stimulation with no seen negative effects on fertility,” reads the abstract report.
Further, the study says that people who chew miraa or muguka the leaves of a variant of the plant banned in several European and African countries have better oral health and have “significantly lower proportions of bacterial disease of the teeth (enamel caries) compared to those who do not chew”.
Although the prevalence of mental disorders among those who chew miraa stood at 12.4 per cent compared to 7.8 per cent among those who do not use the stimulant, the lead researcher, Prof Charles Mbakaya, said the increased instances of mental disorder among those who use the stimulant cannot be attributed exclusively to it.
“We observed that there was significant use of other things like tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, and bhang that predisposed the chewers to mental disorders,” explained Prof Mbakaya.
“In fact, we subjected the data through finer levels of analysis which showed that miraa did not cause these psychotic disorders.”
In fact, it boosts it! For instance, the study states that “teeth-related problems like discolouration, loss of teeth and tooth destruction are not an effect of chewing the stimulant alone, but of other factors like hygiene and chewing khat with other substances”.