In a house in Amritsar's Basant Avenue, an 87-year-old woman continues to fight the menace of drug addiction in Punjab , in spite of her failing health. Four years ago, she was treating addicts; now, in the twilight years of her life, she is writing a book on how to take care of addicts and wants it to be available to the people for free.Meet Dr Saroj Sanan. When heroin had just started to spread its tentacles in the state in 1995, the then 66-year-old Dr Saran had helped set up Red Cross Society De-addiction Centre in the heart of the city and rendered it her services for free till 2012, the year the centre was shut down for want of funds.Unlike counsellers of this day and age, Dr Sanan - who cared for more than 3,000 addicts during her time at the centre - says when it comes to treating a person hooked to narcotics, the counseller has to have a heart-to-heart bond. "They, the addicts, are victims of circumstances. You cannot counsel them for some time and then think they'd be fine," she says. "They need to be under constant observation. When it comes to treating an addict, everyone knowing the victim has to be involved -family, friends, relatives, and especially the doctor."Born in 1929, Dr Sanan had graduated from Lady Harding Medical College, Delhi, in 1953. She later married Dr D P Sanan and got settled in Amritsar. According to Dr Sanan, she had expected the drug menace in Punjab to spiral out of control. "I could see it in the way addicts were coming to our centre," she says. "At first, it was just smack and opium. By 2000, we started getting patients hooked to capsules and cough syrups. When the centre was about to be shut down in 2012, we were getting patients addicted to multiple drugs."When asked if treating an addict is easy, Dr Sanan replies with a straight-forward "no". "It is very difficult. In fact, even if the patient gets past one year of de-addiction, he has to be rehabilitated. And that is tougher. In many cases, the patients relapses and get hooked to drugs again," she says. "Even if they don't want to, it could be a friend who makes them try the drug again."To make her point, Dr Sanan gives example of how they had tried to use former addicts as peer educators to counsel other patients. "However, it later turned out that the peer educators were supplying drugs to the patients," she adds.Talking about the book, Dr Sanan says she's writing it because "our youngsters require guidance". "We cannot wish away this problem. If we don't act now, more generations will be ruined. As long as I am alive, I am going to make all efforts to ensure that does not happen."