The Drug that 'Eats Junkies'

*Post contains graphic imagery


Krokodil, or crocodile, is Russia's deadliest designer drug. The average user of krokodil, a dirty cousin of morphine that's spreading like a virus among Russian youth, does not live longer than two or three years, and the few who manage to quit usually come away badly disfigured.

 

The active component is codeine, a widely sold over-the-counter painkiller that is not toxic on its own. But to produce krokodil, whose medical name is desomorphine, addicts mix it with ingredients including gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorous, which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes. The high lasts about an hour and a half, and it takes about an hour to cook it. It is around 8-10 times more potent than morphine.

 

In 2010, between a few hundred thousand and a million people, according to various official estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia. It is so far the only country in the world to see the drug grow into an epidemic, primarily due to the difficulties users have in procuring heroin. Predictably, it has spread the fastest in the poorest and most remote parts of the country, like Vorkuta.

 

Pavlova, an ex-user remarks, ''The winters there last eight months of the year and the young people are in a constant state of boredom. Most of them drink and few of them work, the same as in hundreds of towns and villages across Russia's frozen north. Besides her, Pavlova says there were about a dozen krokodil addicts she hung around with, including her brother. "Practically all of them are dead now," she says. "For some it led to pneumonia, some got blood poisoning, some had an artery burst in their heart, some got meningitis, others simply rot."

 

The "rotting" explains the drug's nickname. At the injection site, which can be anywhere from the feet to the forehead, the addict's skin becomes greenish and scaly, like a crocodile's, as blood vessels burst and the surrounding tissue dies. Gangrene and amputations are a common result, while porous bone tissue, especially in the lower jaw, often starts to dissipate, eaten up by the drug's acidity.

 

As the number of users continues to rise, despite the widely known symptoms, the Russian government is struggling to get the situation under control.

Just like Xylazine in Puerto Rico, Russia's own private drug hell is gaining momentum with the latest in a new strain of illegal narcotics.
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