Fentanyl

Voyageur

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Just wondering if people are seeing an explosion in this drugs use?

My partner was very understandably upset tonight with another death and another batch of overdoses from this drug in the community. And here is the thing observed in the small area where we live, and it could be reasonably suspect that it is rampaging through many communities. Here, I've recently heard of whole families being taken out - one or two of their children have overdosed and died. There is also families where, at one point in time, these drugs were prescribed and again, the whole family became hooked with horrible results. Also, in the native communities, sometimes almost everyday kids are dying or in a horrible place without the ability to stay off it until it, too, takes their lives. With stories like a child telling their parents in rehab, to just kill me, breaks your heart.

I just can't believe how wide spread this seems to have become and the people it is taking out is staggering - opioids, like fentanyl, are said to be taking 40 people a day in the U.S. alone, and that is probably way off.

A little searching turned up many articles on the internet, and at SoTT, there was this from 2008: Deadly Painkillers Taking Young Lives. Although the article discusses methadone, and one commenter seems to correct the point, yet these later drugs are just plain ugly.

My other question is, can someone point me to an article/method that best describes how to get off this drug in a step by step process?

Thanks
 
voyageur said:
My other question is, can someone point me to an article/method that best describes how to get off this drug in a step by step process?

This is a drug that should be used only in a hospital setting and/or in patients with terminal cancer.

If someone has so much pain that warrants fentanyl, I would see about doing a strict anti-inflammatory diet, taking supplements and doing complementary therapy such as FIR saunas, cold therapy, massage therapy or whatever eases up the inflammation and/or pain.

As for supplements, "The Mood Cure" by Julia Ross could be a good start to determine which supplements might help.

I hope to see more research and experiences on how to get off this drug though. It is really a tragedy.
 
voyageur said:
Just wondering if people are seeing an explosion in this drugs use?

My partner was very understandably upset tonight with another death and another batch of overdoses from this drug in the community. And here is the thing observed in the small area where we live, and it could be reasonably suspect that it is rampaging through many communities. Here, I've recently heard of whole families being taken out - one or two of their children have overdosed and died. There is also families where, at one point in time, these drugs were prescribed and again, the whole family became hooked with horrible results. Also, in the native communities, sometimes almost everyday kids are dying or in a horrible place without the ability to stay off it until it, too, takes their lives. With stories like a child telling their parents in rehab, to just kill me, breaks your heart.

I just can't believe how wide spread this seems to have become and the people it is taking out is staggering - opioids, like fentanyl, are said to be taking 40 people a day in the U.S. alone, and that is probably way off.

A little searching turned up many articles on the internet, and at SoTT, there was this from 2008: Deadly Painkillers Taking Young Lives. Although the article discusses methadone, and one commenter seems to correct the point, yet these later drugs are just plain ugly.

My other question is, can someone point me to an article/method that best describes how to get off this drug in a step by step process?

Thanks

I agree with Gaby that this particular drug should be relegated to the hospital setting or to terminal cancer patients. In fact, there really should be a tighter leash on all opiates in circulation. It has been my observation that most doctors are very careful at how much they prescribe, but that is only most. That still leaves hundreds, maybe thousands, who are irresponsible and/or way to liberal with these meds.

But there is the flip side: the responsibility of the patient as well. I have seen many families that are financially ruined by diseases such as cancer, and the patient has little option than to sell their 'overstock' of pain meds just to make ends meet, or provide for their children. That's really a sad scene. Others may be enablers to family members who are addicts.

But I think what makes Fentanyl so dangerous, is that as a home med it is prescribed as a trans-dermal patch that slowly releases the medicine through the skin over the course of 3 days. I have known heavy drug users as patients that boil the patches in a hot tea and drink it. You can image...a 3 days dosage of opiates being ingested in just a couple swallows...just how intense that might be, and why it would be easy to overdose!

Clearly in the right setting, this drug is a godsend, but in the wrong hands a disaster.
 
There is also a wave of death from overdose of Fentanyl in Montreal. And for having had the addiction to it, I can say that this is the most dangerous drug I ever had contact with. It is something like 80 times stronger than morphine. I have seen people OD on just one puff of patch smoked on tin foil. So imagine those using it intraveinous?! It is a menace to society!
 
CNS said:
Clearly in the right setting, this drug is a godsend, but in the wrong hands a disaster.

Definitely seems the case.

romochar said:
There is also a wave of death from overdose of Fentanyl in Montreal. And for having had the addiction to it, I can say that this is the most dangerous drug I ever had contact with. It is something like 80 times stronger than morphine. I have seen people OD on just one puff of patch smoked on tin foil. So imagine those using it intraveinous?! It is a menace to society!

Yes, the patches method keep's popping up in articles, as well as F-liquids and powders used to cut other drugs.

I'm trying to understand more about it. This week a number of kids were revived at hospital. Another family has to pack around some type of injection; perhaps it's Narcan as shown below - not sure. Today, a 25 year old son of a local person died from convulsions and on this one, not sure either, yet there seems to be a connection to others who have been using this drug.

Overdose Treatment http://www.projectknow.com/research/fentanyl-overdose/

Fentanyl overdose treatment should occur immediately upon recognizing that an overdose is in progress. If the overdose is caused by a patch or lozenge then the first part of the treatment is to remove the remaining fentanyl to avoid reinforcing the amount already absorbed in the user's system. From there, the fentanyl is treated as a poison.

If the drug dose was a recent one and there is a chance that the drug can be found within the user's stomach, medical personnel may give the user activated charcoal or pump the user's stomach to remove as much of the drug from his or her system as possible before absorption into the blood stream. While this will not stop the fentanyl overdose symptoms already being experienced, it will help prevent further damage from the drug.

A narcotic antidote exists for use with fentanyl overdoses. Narcan, the brand name for the drug naloxone, is commonly used to counter opiate overdoses from drugs like fentanyl. Given intravenously, Narcan can have an effect on the patient within a minute, reducing the depression of the central nervous system that results from a Fentanyl overdose. The effect of the Narcan is shorter than the usual length of an overdose so Narcan is often given repeatedly to help against fentanyl overdose symptoms.

Fentanyl overdose treatment also includes supportive treatment of the individual symptoms of the overdose. For instance, slowed respiration is usually treated with an application of mechanical ventilation to assist with breathing.

Sad.
 
This article just came up on Fentanyl. They are claiming it's being shipped into the U.S. via China, along with materials to set up lab's.

" Fentanyl, an opioid so potent that in some forms it can be deadly if touched.”

Chinese suppliers have been flooding the US and Canada with a deadly drug
http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-suppliers-flood-us-and-canada-with-fentanyl-2016-4

The dozen packages were shipped from China to mail centers and residences in Southern California.

One box was labeled as a “Hole Puncher.”

In fact, it was a quarter-ton pill press, which federal investigators allege was destined for a suburban Los Angeles drug lab.

The other packages, shipped throughout January and February, contained materials for manufacturing fentanyl, an opioid so potent that in some forms it can be deadly if touched.

When it comes to the illegal sale of fentanyl, most of the attention has focused on Mexican cartels that are adding the drug to heroin smuggled into the United States.

But Chinese suppliers are providing both raw fentanyl and the machinery necessary for the assembly-line production of the drug
powering a terrifying and rapid rise of fatal overdoses across the United States and Canada, according to drug investigators and court documents.

“We have seen an influx of fentanyl directly from China,” saidCarole Rendon, the acting US attorney for the northern district of Ohio in Cleveland. “It’s being shipped by carrier. It’s hugely concerning because fentanyl is so incredibly deadly.”

The China connection is allowing local drug dealers in North America to mass produce fentanyl in pill form, in some cases producing tablets that look identical to an oft-abused version of the prescription painkiller OxyContin. It also has been added to Xanax pills. And last week, fentanyl pills made to resemble the painkiller hydrocodone were blamed for a wave of overdoses in the Sacramento area, including nine deaths.

The fentanyl pills are often disguised as other painkillers because those drugs fetch a higher price on the street, even though they are less potent, according to police.

The Southern California lab was just one of four dismantled by law enforcement in the United States and Canada in March.

In British Columbia, police took down a lab at a custom car business that was allegedly shipping 100,000 fentanyl pills a month to nearby Calgary, Alberta where 90 people overdosed on the drug last year. The investigation began when border authorities intercepted a package in December containing pharmaceutical equipment. Police would not describe the equipment but told STAT it came from China.

Federal agents shut down a Seattle lab set up in the bedroom of a home in a residential neighborhood. Similarly, investigators last week raided a suburban Syracuse, N.Y. residence that police charged was a “Fentanyl Processing Mill.” Investigators found six people inside the home mixing and packaging the drug and seized enough fentanyl to make 5,866 doses. As they entered the home, police reportedly were warned by the alleged dealers not to touch the fentanyl without gloves because of its potency.

The emergence of decentralized drug labs using materials obtained from China — and often ordered over the Internet — makes it more difficult to combat the illicit use of the drug.

“We had a spike in 2007” of fentanyl-related deaths, said Russell Baer, a spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. “We traced it to a single production lab in Mexico and the deaths went away. Now, it is not restricted to one site.”

Fentanyl is legally used to treat people with severe pain, often after surgery, but this prescription fentanyl is not the source of most of the illegal trade.

People who unknowingly take fentanyl — either in pill form or when cut into heroin — can easily overdose because it is up to 100 times more potent than morphine and many times that of heroin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It works quickly, and multiple doses of the antidote naloxone are often required to reverse an overdose.

US health and law enforcement officials began warning of a spike in fentanyl deaths last year, a trend that has continued into this year. Fentanyl has surpassed heroin as a killer in several locales. A recent report by the CDC identified 998 fatal fentanyl overdoses in Ohio in 2014 and the first five months of 2015. Last month, federal prosecutors in Cleveland charged a local man with selling blue pills that appeared to be 30 milligram doses of the milder painkiller oxycodone. When tested, the 925 pills in his possession turned out to be fentanyl.

“One of the truly terrifying things is the pills are pressed and dyed to look like oxycodone,” said Rendon. “If you are using oxycodone and take fentanyl not knowing it is fentanyl, that is an overdose waiting to happen. Each of those pills is a potential overdose death.”

In Calgary, the fentanyl pills were produced to look similar to a version of OxyContin that was easily abused before it was replaced in 2012 by a tamper-resistant form, according to police.

The pills are the same shade of green as OxyContin and are marked “80”, which was a frequently abused dosage of the drug. On the street, the fentanyl pills are called “shady 80s,” said Calgary Police Sergeant. Martin Schiavetta.

They are sold for about $20 a pill, and some addicts take 15 to 20 pills a day.

“We have tracked the import from China,” Schiavetta said of fentanyl sold in the Canadian city. “The dealers ask for fentanyl powder and there are websites that guarantee delivery. If it is stopped at the border, they will send you a new one.” He said the packages are labeled as different products, such as car parts.

In Edmonton, Alberta, police inspector Dwayne Lakusta said fentanyl and pill presses are coming from China. “It is getting worse,” he said of that city’s fentanyl problem. “We will be battling this every day moving forward.”

Federal agents in Southern California became aware of the fentanyl operation there when a US Customs and Border Protection agent discovered a commercial pill press being sent from China to Gary Resnik, a Long Beach, Calif., man who has since been charged in the drug ring along with three other men.

Resnik allegedly set up a company called “Beyond Your Dreams” to order the machine, which was shipped through Los Angeles International Airport by a Chinese company called Capsulcn International, according to court records. Those records allege the Chinese company has a history of shipping pill presses to customers in the United States using fake shipping labels. Attempts to identify a specific location of the company and contact information were unsuccessful.

Federal agents eventually seized six pill presses they allege were used by the Southern California dealers. Each machine could produce thousands of pills an hour.

The dealers allegedly operated one lab out of a single-story home they rented in Baldwin Park, Calif. Investigators believe none of the men arrested actually lived there. DEA agents and technicians wearing bright-yellow hazardous material suits shut down the lab on March 15.

A storage unit was rented to house supplies and equipment. Agents also discovered handwritten notes listing ingredients and mixtures necessary to manufacture the fentanyl pills, according to court records.

The drug allegedly sold by the Los Angeles dealers was a fentanyl analog, called acetyl fentanyl, which has a slightly different chemical composition. Federal investigators have identified a dozen analogs of fentanyl produced in clandestine labs, all of which act similarly in the body to heroin, with the exception of being more potent.

China last year made it illegal to export acetyl fentanyl, a move that drew praise from US officials. However, several police agencies in North America say the drug continues to stream out of the country.

A report this month from the Department of State’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs found China remains a major producer and exporter of drugs like fentanyl for illicit international markets. The country’s vast chemical and pharmaceutical industries — combined with lax regulation, low production costs, and government corruption — make China an “ideal source” for the export of materials needed in illicit drug production, according to the report.

In an affidavit, DEA agent Lindsey Bellomy said that based on wire transfers and other evidence, she “strongly believes” the Southern California group acquired its fentanyl from China. The affidavit lists a dozen deliveries from China to members of the group in January and February.

When police stopped one customer after he allegedly purchased fentanyl from the group, he was found to have “several thousand pills” later determined to be acetyl fentanyl by lab technicians. The customer told police he purchased drugs from the group every couple of days, and that he, in turn, sold his buyers a minimum of 1,000 pills, a quantity known as “a boat.”
 
angelburst29 said:
This article just came up on Fentanyl. They are claiming it's being shipped into the U.S. via China, along with materials to set up lab's.

" Fentanyl, an opioid so potent that in some forms it can be deadly if touched.”

Wow, a very scary reality.

In British Columbia, police took down a lab at a custom car business that was allegedly shipping 100,000 fentanyl pills a month to nearby Calgary, Alberta where 90 people overdosed on the drug last year.

This must be the wave that passed through this area affecting many.

Concerning the overdose treatments mentioned a few posts back related to Narcan, the following was recently expanded upon in BC:

An antidote to fentanyl, the potent opioid blamed for a rising number of overdose deaths, is available in a take-home kit, but B.C. health officials say they have concerns people who hide their drug habits may have a hard time accessing the antidote.

Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more toxic than morphine, and the overdose rates have spiked because some users are unaware they are taking it, or realize how strong its effects will be.

That's lead to a high number of overdoses — possibly 16 yesterday in Vancouver alone — where the drug slows or stops the user's breathing, possibly leading to brain damage or death.

The drug Naloxone, also known by the trade name Narcan, reverses those effects — restoring normal breathing and consciousness within three to five minutes of an injection, said Dr. Jane Buxton at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

The key is getting the antidote to users in time.

"Fentanyl is particularly toxic, and we really just need to get the message out, so people are aware," said Buxton.

Naloxone works by binding to the same sites in the brain as opioid drugs like fenanyl do — but it has a tighter grasp, so it can kick the opioid drugs off the receptors once they already take effect.

It works quickly, in as little as five minutes, and has a protective effect for 30 to 90 minutes after that, according to information from the provincial harm-reduction program.

Take-home kit available

Ambulance paramedics have naloxone to administer when they're called to a suspected overdose, but B.C. users can also get a take-home kit to have the antidote available when they need it.

"These kits are very effective," said Buxton.

At least 250 overdoses have been reversed in the province using the kits since they became available in 2012, she said — and that's just the number reported to officials.

The kits are available by prescription, in at least 88 sites around the province, and come with training on how to administer the drug for the user, and their family or friends if possible.

Someone experiencing an overdose can't give themselves the injection, which is why health officials encourage people who use drugs, not to use alone.

"Of course there's always a problem when people are hiding the fact that they are using drugs and their family and friends don't know and they're using alone, and that's where there's a higher risk," said Buxton.

"So the stigma associated with drug use can be really dangerous."

Good to know that health professionals are making this readily available.
 
Christ.

I find drug stories like this create an equivalent level of sickened/disturbed reaction in me as when I read material about child abuse rings. Right near the top of my, "Oh god, no" list.

What strikes me intellectually here, is that the Chinese import element sounds almost like Karmic payback for the Opium Wars visited upon China by the British imperialists.

What a horror show.
 
One of the things I've noticed is the influence of the media (Movies) it has on young people, most of my childhood friends do a form of drug, and have a close case where this person always talked about drugs and the movie pineapple express and project X and the wolf of wall street.

The consequences were not good for this person on its 20s (the person is hooked on weed, painkillers, cocaine, steroids and some form of heroin as far as i know),
the influence of the media in big places and boredom in small towns is a factor in this.

it was "normalized" that drugs are just a part of being a teenager. When before when I grew up it was a taboo.

It is truly sad..
 
It is pretty common for anesthesiologists to use this drug (on themselves).
It is a wonderful drug when used appropriately. Very sad to hear about the overdose cases.
There is a big push right now to limit narcotic prescribing. A few years ago, 'they' were complaining that we weren't giving enough to relieve pain. They being the medical PTB. Now (starting 2016) we have to have special, targeted continuing education credit on this very subject to keep license active.
 
Things seem to move from one bad thing to another, and this drug is in the same place as the other reported above; actually scientifically invented in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. The article, as many other articles seem to be doing, lays this at the feet of China.

In another article that was read about it, and because it is not classified, so to speak, is that it is not illegal per se. Perhaps there is something else going on here with this reporting, I mean, based upon no evidence that it is associated with people dying, is this a fiction to create panic? The reason being is that the dose itself would have to be basically less than 1/100th of "two grains of salt" to equal the other drug above. If this is all correct though, it's damn scary.

So this drug is called W-18: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/toxic-w-18-drug-developed-in-edmonton-hitting-streets-across-alberta-1.3458461

An ultra-toxic drug surfacing in Alberta's black market traces its origins to medical research conducted in Edmonton more than 30 years ago.

W-18, a synthetic opioid with no known clinical use, is considered 10,000 times more powerful than morphine and 100 times more potent than fentanyl; a similar narcotic responsible for at least 213 overdose deaths in Alberta last year.

Only ever been tested on mice, human consumption of the W-18 — especially among street users — could have deadly consequences, according to forensic chemist Brian Escamilla.

"When fentanyl hit the streets, we often saw overdose deaths. You're likely to see that here too, just because of the potency of this compound," said Escamilla,who works at California firm which specializes in training law enforcement agencies in the safe handling of clandestine drugs.

W-18 was largely unheard of in Alberta until a drug bust last August put the law enforcement community on alert.

In what was the first publicized seizure of the drug on record in Canada, three of 110 pills seized from a home on the outskirts of Calgary, tested positive for the narcotic.

Though Edmonton police haven't seen the drug here yet, they are warning students about its dangers in school presentations across the city.

The drug was first developed in the early 1980's by a group of University of Alberta researchers.

Chemists stumbled upon formula

In an attempt to create a non-addictive painkiller, the team of chemists, led by pharmacology professor Ed Knaus, stumbled upon the formula for W-18.

"They developed some new compounds," said Escamilla. "In a matter of fact, they actually developed more than 30 compounds.

"But none of the compounds got picked up by a pharmaceutical company so, in essence, their patent lapsed and it just sat on a shelf until someone in China went through the old medical journals, found this compound and started synthesizing it."

According to Escamilla, clandestine labs overseas are taking advantage of a lack of stringent regulation on W-18, and other "designer drugs."

Although never approved for use on humans, W-18 has yet to be classified as a controlled substance in Canada or the United States, creating a legal grey area for smugglers.

"These labs in China, they've been trying to find legal substitutes for drugs like MDMA, which is ecstasy, for amphetamines, for cocaine. They just now started to venture into the opiate drugs.

"They started with fentanyl, and now they've found something more potent than fentanyl," said Escamilla.

'A lot of profit to be made'

"There is a lot of profit to be made and it also skirts most of your government regulations when it comes to controlling narcotics."

W-18 is so potent, ingesting even a minute trace could have dire consequences, according to Escamilla.

"When you look at fentanyl itself, your average dose is 125 micrograms, which is equivalent to the size of two grains of salt.

"This drug is 100 times more potent than that," said Escamilla who notes that the drugs are created in unregulated labs, where dosing will be unreliably dangerous.

"When you try and cut a drug up to that level, you're going to have 'hot spots' in the tablets. There are going to be individual dosages that have elevated drug concentrations that are going to take people out."

Alberta hospitals have been on alert for signs of W-18 overdoses since the beginning of the year.

Although there is no evidence that use of the drug has become widespread, Escamilla says the true numbers would be impossible to track.

"Because these drugs are in such residual concentrations, it's very difficult if not impossible to pick these up in a field test or toxicology," said Escamilla.

"We might be missing some overdose deaths."
 
Well, apparently Prince died from an overdose of Fentanyl:

The Latest: Autopsy: Prince Died of Fentanyl Overdose


A Minnesota medical examiner says Prince died of an accidental fentanyl overdose.

The report from the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office was issued Thursday, more than a month after the music superstar was found dead at age 57 at his Paisley Park mansion.

The single-page report said Prince "self-administered fentanyl," referring to a synthetic opioid many times more potent than heroin.

The report was signed by Quinn Strobl, the office's chief medical examiner.
 
With it being 100 times as powerful as Morphine it is extremely easy to overdose with Fantanyl. It is now being mixed with heroin in the USA and overdoses are quite frequent. So very sad...
 
Woodsman said:
What strikes me intellectually here, is that the Chinese import element sounds almost like Karmic payback for the Opium Wars visited upon China by the British imperialists.
That's what crossed my mind as well when I read about this.
 
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