The rate at which people are dying from drugs is, pardon the pun, shooting up like crazy. Since 2015, mortality rates have doubled in the US, an enormous increase over just nine years. The problem isn’t just getting worse; it’s getting worse at an exponential rate.
That’s because the drug scene is changing, and today’s drug landscape is much more dangerous than it has ever been before, with intensely powerful opioids and fatal combinations that far eclipse even heroin in terms of danger. These are today’s lethal street drugs that can and will kill you. Morphine is a pretty dangerous drug, but it was eclipsed at the latter end of the 20th century by the rise in opioids.
Primarily heroin. If an opiate is a drug naturally created from opium, an opioid uses synthesized chemicals either partially or completely. These opioids behave similarly in the body but have the potential to be far more potent.
If there’s one piece of advice that heroin users will give you, it’s to never try it at all. Heroin has been described as being your best friend. Injected straight into your veins, the drug immediately washes through your bloodstream in high quantities.
It floods into your brain, where it is converted into morphine and immediately binds to your opioid receptors. What comes first is the ‘rush’ that hooks so many. A feeling of intense euphoria washes over your entire body.
It’s the best, most intense feeling you’ll likely ever experience, eclipsing even the most special moments in your life, like your wedding or the birth of your first child. It feels that good. Former addicts who have been clean for years still report thinking about heroin on a daily basis, sometimes obsessively for hours at a time.
It synthesizes a wave of emotion so positive that it breaks the brain. We’re not built to experience the kinds of chemical highs that come from heroin, and once our bodies have a taste of that feeling, it’s painfully hard to go back to daily life. For decades, heroin was seen as one of the most deadly drugs in the US.
But if you look at a graph of drug-related deaths since 2015, heroin deaths are falling. From a peak of around five deaths per 100,000, it dropped down to just 1. 8 in 2022.
Good news, right? Sadly, that is not the case because there is a new line on that graph that has spiked to 22. 7 over that period.
A category of opioids driven up there primarily by the meteoric rise of fentanyl. Fentanyl is entirely synthetic. Structurally it is similar enough to heroin but the minor differences between the two add up to a huge impact.
While heroin is 2-3 times stronger than morphine, fentanyl is anywhere from 50-100 as potent. Take a send to realize just how major of a change that is. Heroin - the drug infamous for ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans - is just a fraction as powerful as fentanyl.
It was originally intended to be an analgesic and a painkiller and can still be administered by licensed medical professionals in the US as a Schedule II substance. While most drugs tend to come in one standard form, fentanyl comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Lozenges, tablets, nasal sprays, injectables, skin patches, pills, and powders.
It’s the last couple that are the most significant. You see, fentanyl is fairly cheap. Compared to a lot of other high-profile drugs like cocaine and heroin, fentanyl has quite a low buying price, but to borrow the words from Tuco Salamanca, it kicks like a mule.
As a result, lots of dealers decide to cut the most expensive drugs with some fentanyl. Mix some of it in with a regular batch of heroin or cocaine, and you not only bring the overall cost down, but you get a stronger product to sell, meaning more cash in your pocket. Buying drugs on the streets today, there is no way of knowing if there’s fentanyl mixed in or how much, and that poses a big problem.
It only takes around 2 milligrams of fentanyl to kill the average person. This varies a lot from person to person depending on age, weight, general health, and genetic reasons, but let’s say 2 milligrams is close enough to a lethal dose for a lot of people. The DEA seized a large quantity of counterfeit pills for testing and found that over 42% of them contained more than 2 milligrams.
Some had as high as 5. 1, more than double the lethal dose. But cutting to boost profits isn’t all fentanyl is being used for.
Let’s head back to the Philadelphia streets to see the latest mix of drugs that’s taken the city by storm: tranq. Known by many online as the ‘zombie’ drug, tranq has transformed drug addiction on Kensington Avenue over the last ten years. The White House's Office of National Drg Control Policy declared it an ‘emergency threat’ and put out a National Response plan last summer to try to get on top of the issue.
Tranq is a mix of two new players in the drugs game: the first is fentanyl, and the second is xylazine. Xylazine was created to tranquilize large animals like horses and cattle back in 1962. They did human trials initially but quickly ruled it out.
It goes without saying that a drug designed to knock out a horse is a pretty dangerous drug for humans to take. It’s a non-opioid, but don’t think that means that it swerves the dangers and effects found in other drugs. It does the things you expect it to do as a sedative, of course.
It will put you to sleep and slow your breathing and heart rate. You also get similar euphoric highs to opioids when it enters your bloodstream. It first started popping up as a heroin replacement in Puerto Rico.
But this is where the mix comes in that makes both xylazine and fentanyl so deadly. Fentanyl has an intense high but doesn’t last so long. Xylazine lasts a long time but doesn’t get you to that same high.
Mix them together, and you get a long, powerful high. The most alluring part? It’s pretty cheap.
Wholesalers will sell a kilogram of xylazine for around $6-$20, making it a very cheap base. Dealers will then mix that with different amounts of fentanyl and sell it by the bag for around $5 each. A bag of heroin would usually cost you at least double that.
So then, what are the dangers of tranq, aside from it being so much more accessible? Well, it’s called the ‘zombie’ drug for a reason. Xylazine has a nasty side effect that doctors are behind the curve on being able to treat: it rots your flesh.
Tranq users will soon develop nasty open wounds that refuse to heal. Because it was never approved for human use, research is still ongoing as to why xylazine has this effect. It seems to inhibit the body’s natural ability to repair itself and close wounds, meaning that even minor cuts and scrapes can steadily fester over time.
Needle marks are likely to pick up infections as they don’t close over properly, leading to nasty rotting holes opening up on people’s arms. For many users, this can, unfortunately, lead to amputation as, by the time they seek medical help, the limb is too far gone to save. And what drugs are then given to them in a hospital to help with the pain?
Usually opioids. Opioids have always had a kryptonite. Another drug, called Narcan, is able to reverse the effects of a heroin overdose, saving the victim's life if administered in time.
Countless addicts have had their lives rescued from the brink by volunteers and doctors armed with Narcan. But it doesn’t work on xylazine. There’s no quick-fix drug to reverse an overdose.
That, in combination with the total lack of any regulation or science when it comes to fentanyl mixing, and you’ve got a real problem. Some fentanyl batches are stronger; some are weaker. Some users can handle more, others can’t.
The amount it takes to kill a person varies wildly, and yet it is all being measured at the milligram level by unqualified criminal drug dealers with homemade setups. Most have no way of consistently measuring anything out at such a precise level. Buying ten bags from a street dealer is like playing a game of Russian roulette.
Each bump will be wildly different from the last, and any one could kill you. If the drugs don’t kill you now, they’ll keep rotting your body away until something else does. And good luck quitting.
The drug that China is feeding you is almost a thousand times as potent as the opium that ravaged their nation hundreds of years ago. Now check out “What Happens To Your Body If You Do Meth. ” Or watch this video instead!
