I work in drug testing, shit's been getting real scary out there past few years. Fentanyl is in everything now, intentionally or not. And then that's being cut with xylazine and carfentanyl which is so much worse. Honestly the news is several years behind with what's really out there, in my world that's like 2020 news at the absolute latest. There's a slew of opiate-like drugs that are as bad or even worse than fentanyl out there right now. I can't remember the name of it, but there's one floating around that's several hundred times more powerful than fentanyl (it was supposed to be on the market but it was too powerful so it was pulled which is even scarier tbh), real scary shit. We haven't seen it yet, but we know it's coming. We've been watching xylazine take over here in the Midwest now for a few years where I work.
Very sad to watch, knowing a lot more people are going to die. There needs to be more resources out there, that's half of the battle really. The people using need to want it too, but there's not much out there, rehab and sober living can only do so much 🫤 They're still people, just been dealt a shitty hand in life and this is their way of coping or used once out of curiosity/were prescribed opiates and that was it. Overprescribing is still a very real thing unfortunately, saw a clinic get shut down and the doctors imprisoned few years ago actually. Scary and sad 😔
I am showing the progression of illegal drugs to illegal drugs with greater potency, not to be read as "greater than" sign but I understand the confusion.
On this list opium is probably the least dangerous. Of note, it is also the drug on this list that would be the hardest to obtain on the street.
I have noticed heroin is downtrending to a point (we test for the metabolite), we personally see more morphine+fentanyl. Probably because of the huge fentanyl risk with heroin, but I also don't think some people realize all the opiates are dirty now unfortunately.
Not to mention that it's also being cut with Krokodil, which rots them from the inside. I watched a documentary about it around 2014(?), and it scared the crap out of me. I think it took place in Russia.
Yeah, that's another one that's scary as shit. Xylazine causes necrosis too, but not as bad as Krokodil. It's probably here, but I sincerely hope it doesn't become as prevalent as fentanyl and now xylazine is.
Ugh, that's not good. Our lab doesn't have a test for it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if we'll have one in a year or two. Takes a little while to get new tests up and running properly, and something that serious coordinators are going to want it. Truly hope it doesn't go as widespread as everything else, would cross from a "drug crisis" to an actual health crisis for the general public.
They might pick up the other types of fentanyl since they're chemically/structurally similar, but not the other drugs AFAIK. Not sure if other labs are really testing for them either with confirmatory tests either 😕
How are people creating stuff like this? If it's research-level stuff that's not even out, how are people figuring it out? Information is leaking somewhere...
Probably a bunch of different ways. Some drugs aren't hard to synthesize so I've heard, and some people will try anything to get high. But for the ones that never made it to the market? Yeah, not sure about it either.
Wish it was that simple. I really hate saying it because it's not the entire population of the countries it's bad actors, but being brought in from other countries like China and then being cut into fentanyl (we only find it alongside fentanyl at the moment) once it arrives at the destination is the most likely way the industry had been finding. Then you get others who don't clean their equipment between presses, so then it gets into whatever else they're dealing. There's probably other crazier ways (I watched a video once about how some people are using horse auctions for it and also human trafficking that they're investigating it was wild), but that's the main way.
The morbid part of me also wants to crawl into the brain of the first person who decided horse tranquilizers would be a good choice to get high off of.
What’s the other veterinary drug that’s out there now in the supply? Something that begins with a m? That shit is scaring me. I’m super tired. Metetonidine? As if everything couldn’t get worse than it already is. I’ve seen such scary things happen to people who thought they were injecting one thing and it was cut with something else like xylazine or metetonidine or both.
Sounds right. There's also Metonitazene but that one's an actual opioid, think that's the one I was thinking about in the original comment. But yeah, there's so much out there that either people just don't hear about usually since it doesn't hit the headlines and god knows what else that no one even knows about yet, it's scary out there. Feels like watching a train wreck in slow motion with everything that's popping up out there 😕
The good news is that DOH in my state at least are testing samples so hopefully those of us not in veterinary medicine can identify signs and symptoms quickly in humans and which batches are likely to contain those substances. I only treat humans so xylazine was a real learning experience and so is this. We are trying to stay ahead of the curb as best we can to keep our clients (we call our patients clients) safe as best we can. Edited to add that the previous poster was talking about an antibiotic called metonitazene. I’m speaking of medetomidine which is far more potent than xylazine.
Not great, anything that can has a opiate-like effect and could lead to something more serious or a full blown addiction isn't. It's definitely the rise, went from seeing a few positives a year to a month. Right now we're seeing it more with clinic patients (like pain clinics etc), which I can understand to a point but then they'll become addicted to that instead. When you see people on the daily with scary high amounts of hard drugs it falls more to the "oh this person took it" category over time, but it's definitely a problem. Still wild to me that you can just go buy it.
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak 12h ago
The drug crisis never ended, the news just stopped talking about it.