Drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, and khat (a stimulant) cause irreparable brain damage that will affect the soldiers even as they get older and start to heal from the trauma of the war. (Bindu, 2010) Erick Kenzo, a former child soldier who was kidnapped at age 15 and used as a child soldier said, “We have used drugs, and often the addiction lasts after we have been demobilised. Some continue to take drugs because of neglect. They are not helped to integrate into society, or to understand what has happened to them.”(Bindu, 2010)
Child soldiers were taken as an easy way to get easily manipulated soldiers that could be controlled and used as controllable robots. At any time, there are an estimated 300 000 child soldiers fighting and some are as young as seven years old. (Statistics on Child Soldiers, 2013) These children were forcefully taken from their families and brought to camps where they would train, live, and fight with other children. An estimated one million people were displaced during the war and hundreds of children after the war are still living apart from their families because they were separated during the conflict. (Wintonyk, 2014) Many children are unable to find their remaining family, if they have any left, but many are also not welcomed home after their time at war. Many communities and families blame the child soldiers for the killing they performed while being imprisoned so they are not allowed to return to their villages for their own safety.
The human mind is so fragile that contact with violence, drugs, and severe emotional instability at such a young age has its profound effects on child soldiers. The psychological impact of conflict on child soldiers often has irreparable consequences when it comes to the mental stability of these children. Studies have shown that children that are used as soldiers often suffer from a variety of disorders including depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, and addiction to aggressive behavior. The destruction they have witnessed often makes child soldiers unable to move forward with their lives but it is not only the violence that they have seen that plagues their minds. These child fighters are often not able to move past their own conscience when they are forced to come to terms with the crimes and violence that they themselves have committed. (Chatterjee, 2012)