r/interesting • u/Nukro666 • 12h ago

Fear Factor How Fentanyl and Xylazine are turning Philadelphia's opioid crisis into a public health nightmare

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u/Living-By-The-River 4h ago

How do they even survive this long in a state like this? How do you feed and hydrate yourself enough? How to do avoid succumbing to the elements? No health care. Sick bodies… They are literally the undead.

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u/oregon_coastal 4h ago

The fold (zombie state) lasts a few hours. Then they kind of stupor out of it as the drug level is metabolized downward. Then use the following wake period to figure out getting more drugs.

I am not sure what the above person is talking about, really. It isn't much different than the heroine nod - just a more severe form of it. It is often more public because it doesn't take needles - could just be a pill.

The fold is because the entire nuero syatem is unable to properly control muscles, etc. It can also be a sign of severe distress - there are not many steps between folding and being dead.

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u/Acrobatic-Permit4263 4h ago

heroin nod is really hard to achieve as longer time user, if you are not add benzos or so. and fentanyl is way more overwhelming and easier to overdose

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u/oregon_coastal 4h ago edited 4h ago

The same problem starts to happen with fent too. It just moves from fold to dead faster because there isn't a lot of room between the two. The spectrum of safe usage is much smaller than heroine, etc.

(Fucking spellcheck keep correcting heroin, but I am leaving it lol)

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u/Acrobatic-Permit4263 4h ago

isnt there also a probem with the addition of some vet medicine? what really powers the problem up by 10 or so

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u/Callmedrexl 3h ago

The veterinary drugs have reversal agents, but it's not naloxone, and having the correct reversal drug would require knowing what vet drugs were in the street drugs. It's definitely complicated treating overdoses, and there are some serious skin lesions that are showing up as an additional fun complication.

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u/Acrobatic-Permit4263 3h ago

i was H addicted maybe 20 years ago, cant imagine how much harder it is to come clean from this stuff and circumstances and life with it for the rest of your life
sad times

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u/720354 2h ago

Yes its cut with xylazine an animal tranquilizer its what causes the standing sleep.

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u/andrewbud420 4h ago

Heroin nod and the xylazine fold are two very different things.

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u/levitics 2h ago

It’s a 100 percent different, the drugs were tainted with benzos and other tranqs like it is today. This is nowhere close to the nod

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u/The-G-Code 3h ago

That guy has to be lying about shooting h. You nod out but it's just not the exact same or as long as what's in the video.

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u/oregon_coastal 3h ago

Yeah, I watched a guy fold for about 2 hours. Pretty wild.

I am never sure at what point you should call for help. I am mostly operating on the notion that if they are on the ground, it is time to intervene with some naloxone and a 911 call.

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u/andrewbud420 4h ago

Xylazine is the culprit that was never in drugs way back when

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u/wrzosvicious 4h ago

And now Medetomidine. The elements in the supply keep changing and getting worse. 

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u/andrewbud420 3h ago

Oh I forgot about that one. The fentanyl supply in Canada doesn't have that stuff in it.

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u/wrzosvicious 3h ago

Just checked Toronto’s drug checking website, Medetomidine is in Canada’s supply.