I wanted to know what the heck was so great about this drug. Apparently, not much, except it’s easy to do at home:
The high associated with krokodil is akin to that of heroin, but lasts a much shorter period. While the effects of heroin use can last four to eight hours, the effects of krokodil do not usually extend past one and a half hours, with the symptoms of withdrawal setting in soon after. Krokodil takes roughly 30 minutes to an hour to prepare with over-the-counter ingredients in a kitchen. Since the home-made mix is routinely injected immediately with little or no further purification, “krokodil” has become notorious for producing severe tissue damage, phlebitis and gangrene, sometimes requiring limb amputation in long-term users. The amount of tissue damage is so high that addicts’ life expediencies are said to be as low as two to three years, especially as they are often highly susceptible to infections and gangrene due to widespread HIV infection among injecting drug users in Russia
Wikipedia
I thought this stuff was made as a way to break up the opiate containing drugs people could get their hands on into something more like heroin. In other words, it’s a sad compromise. I wouldn’t be surprised if people have been doing this for a while. I would guess that the really horrible side effects are because people are using almost anything to get the chemical reaction they want, and are then injecting all of that whatever-it-is into themselves.
- Mr.Science beat me here and has a smarter post. I’m too lazy to google!
Zombie dope?
I thought that was bath salts, why not call it something sensible like the Russians do: Gator Aid or Krok(you know, like crack but it makes you scaly instead)?
I think I’d rather huff gasoline.
I’m deeply and profoundly not worried about this “epidemic”.
According to the Week, each injection costs about $6 to $8, while heroin is up to $25.
While:
While the effects of heroin use can last four to eight hours,@MsScience
So basically it costs more per hour than heroin. Nobody is doing this because they want to get high. If anything they’re doing it for attention. Which they’ll get a lot of, along with fictional “bath salts” usage.
Hot damn! Sounds great! Where can I get me some of this zombie smack? I’m throwin a party!
You don’t care that the War on Some Drugs is killing people and driving people to take unutterably dangerous drugs when they can’t get safer alternatives [like heroin instead of krokodil]?
I’m wildly more concerned about people being stung by bees.
Drug dealers of Phoenix, I am ashamed of you. Do you forget the creed of your profession?
Neither pigs nor snitches nor Plan Columbia stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
What kind of shit job delivering good drugs are you doing that people would be doing some ruskie rotgut(among other places), when they could be enjoying the fine alkaloids of South America, the exotic opiates possibly prepared by our very own puppet president’s brother in Afghanistan, or good, honest, Snow Mexican weed? For shame.
Eh, I prefer butane.
After looking at so many images of zombie cosplay, I am… not quite past the point where these images can shock me.
I wish I hadn’t clicked through to the pictures. I’m a BII fainter and I just about went over. Oh my god. How can anyone get high enough to think that’s OK?
The thing about Krokodil isn’t that people want attention or that it’s a good high… From everything I’ve read on the subject (more than I care to admit), they do it because in Russia codeine is legal OTC and so it’s easy to synthesize, whereas the heroin that they’d rather do is getting more and more expensive. So you have a compromise of bathtub chemistry that causes all sorts of nasty side-effects due to massive amounts of caustic impurities. Funny thing is that desomorphine itself isn’t a bad drug; it’s actually pretty useful and rather potent. Again, the less than optimal synthesis conditions are what lead to the horrible final product.
Having said all that, I don’t think Krokodil will catch on in the US nearly to the degree that it has in Russia simply because it’s a little more difficult to get your hands on the starting material here.
And now I have to go hug my bunnies because all this talk of Krokodil is bringing up things that cannot be unseen. Seriously. DO. NOT. IMAGE. SEARCH. THIS. DRUG.
Sooo, what’s it need, just a nice cold 'tone wash in a buchner funnel?
My favorite part is how increasingly more dangerous drugs are going to be used as an excuse to double down on the “War on Drugs”.
Anyone who is mocking that this is a dangerous drug seriously needs to click through to some of those Google images…I don’t really have words to describe it. A rainbow colored unicorn could stab out my eyes with a banana, yet I don’t think that would be enough to unsee this.
(I’m not even sure how it’s possible for a body part to still be alive when the only thing keeping it attached at all is bone…)
And I’m gonna add this: SERIOUSLY GUYS, NOT A WONDERFUL THING.
I’m really sorry now that I clicked your link for the image searches.
So mix this with a lot a steroids for my new, awesome, Killer Croc cosplay?
Nobody is “driving people” to take anything…
