Sasha is a scrawny 15-year-old with big brown eyes and floppy hair. He lives with his mother and grandmother, gets frustrated with school and wants to be a carpenter or a car mechanic when he grows up.

He sounds like a normal teenage boy. Except for the fact that he used to buy half a liter of gasoline a day and inhale the fumes after school.

"I had hallucinations - I saw mice running all around me," Sasha says in a matter-of-fact tone, as he sits in the teenage boys' ward of Psychiatric Hospital No. 3, where he has been receiving treatment for substance abuse. He said he knew the habit could damage his brain, but that didn't stop him.

[continues 1087 words]