Why Are Millions Addicted To A Drug That Eats The Flesh Off Their B...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/12/10/why-are-millions-...

David DiSalvo, Contributor

I write about science, technology and the cultural ripples of both.

P HARM A & HEALTHC ARE | 12/10/2013 @ 2:28PM | 52,869 views

Why Are Millions Addicted To A Drug That Eats The Flesh Off Their Bones?
Codeine, gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorous from matchstick heads. Those are typical ingredients in the street drug known as krokodil, a highly addictive toxic cocktail thats three times as cheap to produce as heroin and could be becoming an international problem. What makes this drug so exceptionally strange, however, is that once injected it begins eating the users body from the inside out, causing blood vessels to burst and surrounding tissue to die. Essentially a Image credit: Wikipedia corrosive acid with opiate effects, krokodil destroys body tissue the way battery acid eats through plastic, opening large sores that can go all the way to the bone. Clinically known as desomorphine, on the street its simply called the drug that eats junkies. Krokodil is reportedly 10 times as strong as codeineits principal euphoric ingredientand especially popular in impoverished areas where heroin is too expensive to buy, and hope seems too fanciful to indulge. Like many new street drugs, desomorphine has rather old roots. First formulated in 1932 as a derivative of morphine, the drug was actually patented in Switzerland under the brand name Permonid. Because it was several times as potent as morphine (8-10 times as strong), it quickly gained in popularity with recreational users. In its modern form, krokodil emerged around 2002 from rural Russia as a cheap heroine substitute that anyone with access to codeine pills and a few other ingredients could make in their kitchen. Over the next ten or so years, it spread across the countrys poorest communities, picking up an estimated three million addicts. Unlike its clinically invented predecessor, krokodil is as dirty as dirty drugs comenamed for the fact that users develop scaly skin like a crocodile.

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14-Dec-13 10:32 AM

Why Are Millions Addicted To A Drug That Eats The Flesh Off Their B...

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Since prolonged use of the drug is terminal (the typical lifespan of a krokodil addict is estimated to be about two years), its impossible to really know how many people have been addicted to it, but whats clear is that its no longer just Russias problem. Like any cheap but effective street drug, its spreading to other impoverished areas where people can quickly learn how to make it. One of those places is Mexico. The New York Daily News recently reported on a girl in Mexico City who was hospitalized with severe lacerations to her reproductive organs. What was first thought to be a horrific STD infection turned out to be the effects of the 17-year old injecting krokodil directly into her genitals. The young woman who used this drug had an infection that had rotted her genitals, Mexicos National Institute of Migrations Jos Sotero Ruiz Hernndez told El Periodico Correo. It wasnt sexually transmitted. She said shed been using krokodil for the last two months, he added. Cases like that could begin appearing with increasing frequency in Mexico City, where other toxic highs like huffing glue, gasoline and propane have already taken a terrible toll on the poorest communitieswith children and teenagers topping the list of those hardest hit. In a recent report, Time magazine dubbed krokodil The Worlds Deadliest Drug and chronicled the cheap narcotics movement out of Russia into Europe and now into parts of North and South America. The monster has crossed the ocean, according to the Time report. So far, however, emergency rooms in the U.S. are not reporting cases involving krokodil, and those that have been reported are still unverified. In U.S. cities, heroin, methamphetamine and prescription drugs are the reigning addiction heavyweights. Its unlikely that krokodil will ever come close to any of these, or for that matter even take hold here. The relatively lower cost and higher availability of other drugs makes using a corrosive, euphoric acid unappealing to even the worst-off junkies. As a Slate article recently pointed out, why would drug users in the U.S., where heroin is relatively cheap and easy to find, go out of their way to find krokodil, a drug that would be much harder to locate and will eat their flesh? The Time report and a similar one on CBS News have made many skeptical about whether krokodil is an actual threat or a media fabrication. For now its safe to say that in the U.S., there is no credible evidence of a developing krokodil drug threat. Nevertheless, in other parts of the world the threat and damage are very real. In terms of raw physical damage, meth comes closest to krokodil, with the infamous meth mouth dental destruction and pervasive skin lesions that make seasoned meth users look many years older than they are. But even meth, as destructive as it is, doesnt measure up to the suicide high of the flesh-eating narcotic. I dont care, Im gonna fking die in a week says one young boy about to inject krokodil in a Vice documentary called Krokodil Tears released in 2011 (reported by The Daily Beast).

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14-Dec-13 10:32 AM

Why Are Millions Addicted To A Drug That Eats The Flesh Off Their B...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/12/10/why-are-millions-...

Even if it never becomes a drug problem in the U.S., krokodils appeal elsewhere should be cause for concern. Its a drug born of despair, a sort of chemical nihilism seemingly designed to kill its host, and its taking young lives wherever it appears. You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his website, The Daily Brain. His latest book is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brains Power To Adapt Can Change Your Life.

This article is available online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/12/10/why-are-millions-addictedto-a-drug-that-eats-the-flesh-off-their-bones/

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14-Dec-13 10:32 AM