Horrifying Russian designer drug eats addicts' flesh

"It bears resemblance to"? Not that hard, Harley.

Or, you know, it isn't "like" when drugs do horrible things to you in cartoons, because the drug literally does horrible things to you.

Yeah, Cyberwulf gets sarcasm, even when I'm the one trying to use it.

It's here.

The source source is in German, sorry.

Dear lord, only a matter of time until it hits stateside then.

grmblfjx wrote:

It's here.

The source source is in German, sorry.

I never thought much of the Spiegel and think it thrives on stereotypes. How reliable is it really?
P.S. Given the difference between Russian and German policies when it comes to the social impact of drug abuse, I can't imagine why a German junkie would want to come within a mile of krokodil. A pusher trying to pass it off for the good shit would simply lose customers, and if someone was really so dumb as to homemake it - .

Lapin wrote:

Dear lord, only a matter of time until it hits stateside then.

Nah. Meth's too easy.

The Unoriginal wrote:

I never thought much of the Spiegel and think it thrives on stereotypes. How reliable is it really?

Well, it's considered to be respectable, at any rate. It's possible they have political leanings one way or the other, but we're not talking daily mail, really.

Quote :

P.S. Given the difference between Russian and German policies when it comes to the social impact of drug abuse, I can't imagine why a German junkie would want to come within a mile of krokodil. A pusher trying to pass it off for the good shit would simply lose customers, and if someone was really so dumb as to homemake it - .

Apparently that's what happened, though; a handful of people ended up in the hospital with symptoms of severe poisoning and it turned out they thought/had been told they were buying heroin, but it was krokodil.

Penguin wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Dear lord, only a matter of time until it hits stateside then.

Nah. Meth's too easy.

Depends on what's cheaper at the moment though, doesn't it. It gets more difficult to get a hold of the ingredients every year, with every new regulation, not to mention how dangerous it is to make. And meth users =/= heroin users, a lot of the time. Heroin dealers here will probably see this as a way to get a quick payoff, by taking what they have and making this trash so that they can sell it as pure heroin, and make more money. If it kills the users, well, there ain't no one around to point the finger at you, is there? Not to mention, half of the users probably have no idea where they get each hit from.

When stuff like this becomes a reality though, when people are willing to shove something like this up their veins to feed their addictions, it really frightens me. I mean, is that what it has come to?

Lapin wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Dear lord, only a matter of time until it hits stateside then.

Nah. Meth's too easy.

Depends on what's cheaper at the moment though, doesn't it. It gets more difficult to get a hold of the ingredients every year, with every new regulation, not to mention how dangerous it is to make. And meth users =/= heroin users, a lot of the time. Heroin dealers here will probably see this as a way to get a quick payoff, by taking what they have and making this trash so that they can sell it as pure heroin, and make more money. If it kills the users, well, there ain't no one around to point the finger at you, is there? Not to mention, half of the users probably have no idea where they get each hit from.

When stuff like this becomes a reality though, when people are willing to shove something like this up their veins to feed their addictions, it really frightens me. I mean, is that what it has come to?

Now, I might be oversimplifying, but I think eroin addicts have more than one pusher to buy their shit from. One is the main/favourite, the others are backups in case he's out of town, in jail, dead in a crack-related shootout, whatever. If my regular dealer sells me shit, I shift to another one and make sure to alert all my friends that he's not trustworthy. Krokodil kills you over time, it's not strichnine-laced heroin, so whoever was brought in with the symptoms has a) enough breaths left to tell what happened, and b) the right mood to sell out the bastard who sold them shitty stuff. Only in a scenario where there is a single pusher in your area with no competitors, or there aren't any pushers at all and you're down to shooting Windex, krokodil can be more than an isolated incident like the one described.

All I know are the ones in the park across the street, but I think your average junkie would line up for state-administered methadone rather than run the gauntlet of shooting krokodil.

I don't know, I really don't. We've had some weird cases turn up in Baltimore of heroin mixed with some odd things that people shot up not once, but continuously because of the price difference. Meg had one guy come into the emergency room with what she insists to this day looked like a mold on the insides of his arms and his knees from where he'd had some kind of strange reaction to whatever had been in there.

When Meg pointed it out (It took her a minute to work out what the rash was), he said something like "Uh-huh, yeah, I know," but didn't seem to much care. A few days later, he was back, with fresh marks. (We're still trying to figure WTF they had mixed it with)

I just get scared now that if someone is offering it at a cheaper price, well, a lot of heroin junkies around here probably would not care until the necrosis reached the point of scary.

As for a heroin junkie selling out their dealer...um. I don't see that happening. I really don't.

I don't think codeine cough medicine is prescription-free in the US, Lapin... so unless it becomes easier to illegally obtain a prescription medicine than the regulated-but-over-the-counter allergy/sinus medicines used to cook meth (which you can buy plenty of unnoticed as long as you have enough buyers to get it for you), I don't foresee it happening at a large scale, particularly since selling pills containing codeine as-is on the street market is likely lucrative enough by itself to not make it into a cheapo alternative for heroin (I doubt it's worth as much as Vicodin, but that, according to a friend in law enforcement, goes for $40-80 a pill as-is around here, depending on dosage). Sadly, though, heroin gets stretched with all kinds of nasty shit (I read a junkie diary from the '70's that mentioned rat poison and drain cleaner, among other things), so it's pretty easy to kill, maim or disfigure yourself shooting up without krokodil involved.

If this stuff is as addictive as it sounds, then there's the chance that people will continually return to that dealer or find some other way of getting the same stuff - especially those addicts who are looking for something stronger and "fresh". They won't really care if it's hurting them, they just think about the next hit.

That's just a small number probably, but you'd be surprised how far some addicts will go for their source of pleasure. I once knew a man with gangrene caused by diabetes who was addicted to cola (it was at a scale so ridiculous you'd hardly believe it). He was so ridiculously addicted to it that even after he had his leg amputated he escaped the hospital with his drip still attached to go down to the shop to try and buy some. And that was just cola of all things...

EDIT: Also, if you guys are interested in knowing what lengths the US government went to in tracking down meth labs and trying to restrict medicines, there's a documentary called 'The Meth Epidemic' which I found was pretty interesting.

All that aside, my new addiction is Breaking Bad.