Why Synthetic Pot Makes People Act Like Zombies
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. “This is extremely dangerous stuff, and it’s getting more dangerous” as manufacturers continually find new ways to drinking when bored tweak the chemicals in the drug to skirt laws that made some compounds used in K2 illegal since March 2011, Scalzo said. 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.
Why Does Synthetic Marijuana Make People Act Like Zombies?
Although xylazine is not approved for human use, recreational use of the agent, an alpha2 adrenergic agent dubbed “tranq,” has emerged. One possibility is that the drugs lack a compound found in marijuana that may act as a brake, preventing bizarre behaviors. That seems a useful space in which the federal government could operate. We’re still learning what tranq does to users, either on its own or in conjunction with fentanyl and other opioids.
Zombie Drug Tranq Can Lead to Necrosis, Amputations and Death
Since intranasal naloxone is ineffective against xylazine, getting the patient to an EMT or emergency room is critical for respiratory support and even prolonged resuscitation, as xylazine’s effects can be long-lasting. As fentanyl’s effects normally begin to wear off and withdrawal would otherwise begin, xylazine instead is still active, causing sedation. The user may already be in withdrawal but is so sedated from the xylazine that they are not even aware of it. The epicenter of voluntary abuse of xylazine is Kensington Street in Philadelphia, where illegal drugs are openly used. “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.
VP Harris Can Create a New Narrative on Crime and Public Safety Opinion
By 2021, more than a third of all overdose deaths in the city had xylazine detected in their toxicology tests, according to Jennifer Shinefield a field epidemiologist with the city. On its most basic level, tranq is the latest development in the evolution of street drug composition, in part because it’s so easy to get and it’s relatively inexpensive. People who use drugs sometimes don’t know it’s part of what they’re taking even after they have become addicted to it.
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- 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.
- “We will not hesitate to act to keep the public safe. Following advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), we intend to make xylazine a Class C drug.”
- The drug reduces pain and relaxes muscles, while also lowering blood pressure and heart rate.
- “We cannot successfully prevent these tragedies with one hand tied behind our back.”
- “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.
Drug overdose deaths involving xylazine are on the rise, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates. From 2018 to 2021, the number of drug overdose deaths involving xylazine grew from 260 to 3,480 people, CDC figures show. In addition to the tremendous variability principle of aa in the type and amount of compounds from batch to batch and product to product, spice users may not be familiar with the amount of the drug needed to get high, D’Souza. This may cause people to use too much of this potent drug, which can also provoke altered behavior, he said.
When dopamine and norepinephrine are too high, they can stress the brain, which may result in the zombie effect, along with other harmful reactions. In the U.S. there was a major health scare last year after an Arizona man was hospitalized. He was an opiate addict who had injected himself with a homemade batch of Krokodil. Although there were numerous reports of the new “flesh-eating” drug, the Daily Beast and Forbes confirmed that most of the so-called users did not test positive for desomorphine. Instead, it was likely a bad staph infection or use of unsanitary needles.
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. Most people aren’t aware that the effects are unlike marijuana, thus repeated use is uncommon, experts say. A large part of the appeal of synthetic pot is that standard drug screens won’t pick it up. For that reason, active military personnel, people on parole, professional athletes, and those in treatment for substance use disorders are among the earliest reported users of fake weed. Its low cost has made the drug particularly appealing to the homeless population.
It’s often called an adulterant because it’s added with intentionality—it doesn’t just carry the fentanyl, it adds potentially appealing psychoactive properties. “It’s basically sought to increase the overall euphoria or high that’s experienced with fentanyl,” says Kim Janda, a professor in chemistry and immunology at Scripps Research Institute in California. However, many of these figures may be an underestimate, as due to xylazine being considered a mostly non-human drug, it is often not tested for during post mortem examinations.
Exactly how the compounds in K2/spice work to produce their effects is unclear, Scalzo said. They may act directly on the specific receptors in the brain that can bind these chemicals, and they may change how the brain works in the short term and, potentially, the long term, Scalzo explained. It’s difficult to overstate how incompatible the drug is with human consumption. weed paws timeline One of the reasons researchers and government agencies don’t know more about xylazine’s health impact on people, in fact, is that clinical trials were long ago abandoned because the side effects were so dangerous. Its presence in drug-related deaths rose from 0.3% to 6.7% between 2015 and 2020, according to a 2022 report published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Krokodil is a public health emergency in Russia; authorities say there are about 100,000 people addicted to the drug. But it is hard to accurately diagnose someone who also abuses heroin because of the similar symptoms. It also lowers breathing and heart rate to dangerously low levels, which has led to it being dubbed a “flesh-eating zombie drug”. The illegal global xylazine market has so far mostly seen it mixed with strong opioid drugs, such as heroin or fentanyl. 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.
When this happens, a doctor may change their medication to another stimulant or try a nonstimulant medication. Some may also respond differently to a change in the release formula they take. A release formula refers to the speed at which the medication enters the bloodstream. Long-acting formulas release the medication slowly, while short-acting formulas release it quickly. Because it can be difficult for people to remember all the side effects, experts recommend keeping a medication log or journal.
Another theory is that these wounds are directly related to xylazine’s ability to constrict blood vessels, making it hard for blood to pass through tissue. Zagorski thinks it seems unlikely that the wounds are behaviorally driven, as there are black areas of dead tissue at places like users’ fingers and toes, again suggesting it could have to do with poor blood flow. “After repeated use fentanyl and xylazine people can experience withdrawal, which can be difficult to treat requiring close observation and slow tapering of supportive medications,” O’Neil and Kovach said.
