Skin-rotting drug ‘tranq’ infiltrates big cities: ‘Zombifying bodies’

It’s close to impossible to revive the person, as naloxone, or Narcan, the most common overdose reversal treatment do not work with Xylazine. Regular marijuana contains the cannabinoid THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which can attach to receptors in the brain to activate the release of chemical messengers that can make people feel paranoid or anxious, he explained. But the marijuana plant also produces another compound known as cannabidiol, or CBD, which stops the brain from continuing to release these chemical messengers, he said. Although xylazine is not approved for human use, recreational use of the agent, an alpha2 adrenergic agent dubbed “tranq,” has emerged. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, xylazine is a non-opioid tranquilizer used in veterinary medicine which is not approved for human use. However, it has increasingly been used illicitly as an adulterant in combination with other drugs, mostly fentanyl, but also with cocaine, heroin and other drugs, the U.S.

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“There is no safe dose to use”, it concludes, because there is an overlap between fatal and non-fatal doses of xylazine reported in people. “The drug is not included in standard drug screens in the UK, so we don’t know how widespread the xylazine problem is,” said Dr Caroline Copeland, King’s College London lecturer and director of the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths. “Users of spice or K2 don’t really know what chemicals they are getting,” D’Souza said.

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Tests at a Kamloops overdose-prevention site found the powerful drug mixed with heroin, fentanyl and caffeine. The Biden administration has also announced plans to disrupt the supply of both fentanyl and xylazine into the country. The precursor products come from China and are mostly converted to tablet or powder form by cartels in Mexico as Sky News exposed earlier this year. In February, Philadelphia’s substance use prevention and harm reduction chief, Dr Andrew Best, warned https://sober-home.org/ that cities across America should brace for xylazine and called on the federal government to do more. The drug, an animal tranquillizer, is increasingly mixed or “cut” by drug dealers into supplies of fentanyl which itself is already killing over 100,000 Americans every year. Xylazine, often referred to as Tranq or the zombie drug, has spread across America at such alarming speed that the White House has now released a new six-point action plan to tackle the crisis.

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James Sherman sees the telltale signs every day in his job as the director of men’s programs at Savage Sisters Recovery center, in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Some of the drug users arrive there in a stupor, some unable to stay awake, some with open sores or wounds on their hands, arms, legs, heads. “We think that xylazine causes injury to blood vessels in the skin leading to the death of skin tissue and the development of slow-healing or non-healing wounds,” the authors said.

Federally, government officials certainly can consider classifying xylazine as a controlled substance. While the drug naloxone (sold under the brand name Narcan) can reverse the effects of fentanyl overdose, it has no effect on xylazine. Fentanyl is already a powerful drug with a high potential for overdose—which can be life-threatening. The drug is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin as an analgesic, according to the U.S.

1. Her work has been published by Live Science, The Washington Post, WebMD, Scientific American, among others.
2. Almost by definition, that would include adding testing processes that don’t currently exist at many community or county levels of public health.
3. But the combination of xylazine with the opioid is even more potent than fentanyl alone.
4. Medetomidine, a related drug, is generally more potent, with longer duration than xylazine.
5. Stimulants – which also include cocaine and ecstasy – are often referred to as “uppers”.

Routine toxicology screens do not detect the drug, and a CDC spokeswoman says there is no commercially available version of a less expensive test strip for it. As a component of drugs ingested by humans, xylazine was first observed in Puerto Rico in the mid-2000s. There were scattered reports of its use in Philadelphia as early as 2006, but researchers say it wasn’t until COVID hit in 2020, that tranq exploded as a major part of the street drug life, both in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

Almost by definition, that would include adding testing processes that don’t currently exist at many community or county levels of public health. But the combination of xylazine with the opioid is even more potent than fentanyl https://sober-home.org/how-can-i-stop-smoking-crack-archstone-behavioral/ alone. While taking the two drugs together may produce sedation, pain relief and euphoria, both xylazine and fentanyl also lower heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate, leading to the risk of overdose and death.

For example, Scalzo said, when synthetic cannabinoids attach to receptors in the brain and then interact with dopamine — a brain chemical that affects movement — it may cause users’ arms and legs to feel stiff or locked up. But when the drugs interact with serotonin — a brain chemical responsible for sleep and dreams — it may cause users to feel zombie-like and out of it, he said. But a major challenge in understanding the effects of spice on the brain is that “the chemical composition of the drug is a constantly moving target, ” D’Souza said. Unlike marijuana, whose basic makeup is generally similar no matter where the plant is grown, the compounds in a batch of spice can be very different from one day to the next, even if you buy the drug from the same place, he said. “This is extremely dangerous stuff, and it’s getting more dangerous” as manufacturers continually find new ways to tweak the chemicals in the drug to skirt laws that made some compounds used in K2 illegal since March 2011, Scalzo said.

We saw the open wounds, the rotting skin and the volunteer outreach workers overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has seized xylazine-fentanyl mixtures in 48 of the 50 US states. And according to the DEA laboratories, in 2022, 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl tablets contained xylazine. “In our experience, a small wound can heal with cessation of injection, cleaning of the wound and supportive wound care,” the doctors said.

In conjunction, they may also experience fentanyl withdrawal symptoms, such as pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, fever and chills. Krokodil (Crocodil) is a homemade version of a synthetic drug called desomorphine. As the name deso-morphine suggests, the chemical is in the opiate family and closely mimics the effects of heroin and morphine. Pure desomorphine is a very addictive substance with a high potential for abuse. When young people hear the term “synthetic marijuana” or “fake weed” to describe synthetic cannabinoid products, it gives them the false impression that spice or K2 will have effects similar to those of marijuana.

“But there is a massive difference between spice and marijuana,” D’Souza said. The compounds found in spice can be anywhere between 10 and 200 times more potent than THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and they can produce more robust effects, he said. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing, long-term disease, often ending with premature death. Harm reduction is important but not a cure, as more than 20% of all opioid overdose decedents received some form of naloxone.

Stay up-to-date on the biggest health and wellness news with our weekly recap. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The researchers contacted all toxicology laboratories in the UK last year to gather evidence. It is “alarming” to find it in “even a few” illicit e-cigarettes that many think are pretty harmless, experts say.

He first discovered the health dangers of K2 in 2010, after noticing a spike in calls to the Missouri Poison Center about young people who had smoked K2. He said these users thought the drug’s effects would be similar to those of marijuana, but they instead experienced stronger symptoms, including hallucinations, extreme agitation, a rapid heartbeat and extremely high blood pressure. More alarmingly, my colleagues in the addiction field are reporting significant increases in overdose deaths involving fentanyl/xylazine, prompting the Office of National Drug Control Policy to declare xylazine an emerging threat. According to a May 2024 public alert, alpha2 adrenergic agents like medetomidine have also entered the recreational opioid drug supply as fentanyl or heroin adulterants.

Moreover, researchers aren’t sure what happens after the compounds in spice activate the brain’s cannabinoid receptors to cause users of the drug to lose control of their thoughts and actions, D’Souza. This may be related to differences between synthetic and plant-based cannabinoids, or to other components of spice, he said. Why did communities implementing public health strategies not see a statistically significant reduction in opioid overdose deaths? Counterfeit pills and heroin, cocaine, and meth combined with adulterated fentanyl make deaths more likely. Xylazine and medetomidine are growing threats nationwide, especially since most patients have no idea that fentanyl includes an alpha-2 veterinary medicine.

The DEA predicts that xylazine will follow the same path as fentanyl did, working from the east towards the west. They also forecast that the prevalence of xylazine will increase in the fentanyl supply, but will also increase in usage on its own, as it did in Puerto Rico. “Tranq is basically zombifying people’s bodies,” Sam, aged 28, told Sky News. “Until nine months ago, I never had wounds. Now, there are holes in my legs and feet.”

For example, Scalzo said, when synthetic cannabinoids attach to receptors in the brain and then interact with dopamine — a brain chemical that affects movement — it may cause users’ arms and legs to feel stiff or locked up. But when the drugs interact with serotonin — a brain chemical responsible for sleep and dreams — it may cause users to feel zombie-like and out of it, he said. And because xylazine is a sedative and not an opioid, overdose reversal medications like narcan don’t address the drug’s major risks, which include dangerously lowering users’ blood pressure, heart rates and respirations. Those who ingest tranq as part of a fentanyl dose often lapse into hourslong blackouts; by the time they rouse themselves, the effects of the high have worn off, and the desperation for a new dose begins. The CDC still recommends the use of narcan in suspected intoxications involving xylazine, because it’s so often combined with opioids like fentanyl and heroin.

It is in the same group as the drug mephedrone and was only recently banned in the UK and in the US. It is a stimulant, which increases alertness, attention and energy, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Stimulants – which also include cocaine and ecstasy – are often referred to as “uppers”.

The drug reduces pain and relaxes muscles, while also lowering blood pressure and heart rate. Xylazine, also known as “tranq”, “tranq dope”, or the “zombie drug”, has seen increasing usage across major U.S. cities, notably San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. According to one study published in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology in June 2022, xylazine has been detected in drug supply across 36 states and the District of Columbia. The rise of xylazine, a common additive to illicit substances like fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine, and a likely contributor to spiking overdose death rates in the U.S., has researchers and government agencies on alert.

Designed to mimic the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in natural marijuana, the artificial substance has far more powerful effects. It was first seen in the United States in 2008, “What K2 does is puts you in a world, a delusional world, have your mind spinning,” said a man who went only by Andrew in an interview with CBS News. “It’s mind-altering.” Synthetic pot is a mixture of dried herbs and even lawn clippings sprayed with chemicals, ground up, and either eaten or smoked. Long available in gas stations, corner stores, and head shops, this unregulated, unpredictable chemical substance is marketed as a legal high. Although authorities have made it against the law to sell, buy, or possess many of these chemicals, manufacturers sidestep the regulations by constantly changing the chemical makeup of their mixtures. Easy access (a hit costs as little as $1), and the belief that synthetic pot is natural and therefore harmless, are said to have contributed to its popularity.

Research, prevention, early identification, intervention, and treatment are all needed. In a National Institute on Drug Abuse study, xylazine injected with fentanyl induced a rapid brain oxygen decrease, similar to fentanyl alone. However, the response lacked the second hypoxic phase of the oxygen response occurring with fentanyl alone, a sort of “second chance” for reversal. Also, the duration of the oxygen decrease is much longer with the drug mixture than with fentanyl alone. Hence, a major danger of xylazine plus opioid drugs is prolonged extreme lack of oxygen to the brain. As fentanyl’s effects normally begin to wear off and withdrawal would otherwise begin, xylazine instead is still active, causing sedation.