Tranq user reveals devastating effects of flesh-eating drug:My skin started to look like I have scales

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From Marjorie Hernandez AND Jesse O’Neill

May 15, 2023 | 4:59 pm

As Los Angeles braces for a tsunami of meat-eating tranquilizer drug overdoses, one addict told The Post of the intense ups and downs of taking the animal tranquilizer.

Shawn, who has said the tranquilizer mixed with fentanyl is the new drug in some circles, said he first got the powerful pain reliever from a vet.

The drug, known to chemists as xylazine, is used to sedate horses and cattle and is not intended for human use.

I wanted to try something new and one of the effects that had on me was that I started getting a lumpy rash on my lower back. My skin just started to feel weird, like I almost have scales, Shawn said.

First named as a tranquilizer on the streets of Puerto Rico, the zombie drug has been found in most US states and has begun to saturate the New York City street market, according to prosecutors.

Demand for her peak roller coaster has crept westward onto the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco, alarming doctors and police alike.

Tranq slows down the heart rate of the users and leads to ulcers and skin lesions.

If injected it can lead to skin and muscle degradation and decomposition, leading to its nickname as a zombie drug.

Medical professionals have warned that it often leads to the amputation of users’ limbs.

Shawn, who said he once had to perk up after overdosing on a concoction of heroin and fentanyl in a Starbucks bathroom, explained why he found the quiet tempting.

Your heart is beating really, really, really, really, really, really fast. But you can’t, you can’t move, added Shawn, who didn’t want his last name published.

It’s like he’s just crazy. I don’t want to sound like I’m saying, it’s the bomb, but it has an amazing effect when it hits the bloodstream. It does something to your mind and there is no pain. Like you’re riding a roller coaster and then there’s no pain.

The Skid Row resident said he mixed the tranquilizer with other drugs on four occasions and also injected it himself.

Normally, it’s like a vial and you put it in like you don’t know if you’ve ever seen a tranquilizer gun with a big needle. And it looks like that, Shawn said, describing the process of dosing him.

When you shoot it, it hurts. But after about two or three seconds, you feel no pain. You are out.

Shawn and others like him are part of a burgeoning epidemic of tranquilizer abuse in the city of Angeles.

In 2008-2010, that’s where it began infiltrating the Northeast and now occupies 90 percent of Philadelphia’s drug market, or 25 percent of New York and the tri-state area drug market, he said dr. Siddarth Puri, LA County Public Health Associate Medical Director for Substance Abuse Prevention and Control.

Drug dealers often use xylazine to cut heroin and fentanyl, as it makes the effects of these drugs last longer.

We had four overdoses in San Francisco in February. In Los Angeles County, we know of one death in 2021 related to the tranquilizer, Dr. Puri added.

Puri noted that his office is usually several months late in obtaining information from the coroner’s office to determine what substances are in people who have died.

We are now in the position where we need to make sure the public is educated, make sure they know the risk factors, and make sure they know what to do if they suspect tranquilizer may be in their substances. be a tsunami.

Congress has moved to make Tranq a controlled substance, but the bill has yet to pass. Meanwhile it is becoming more common on the streets with a blend of fentanyl and tranquilizers seized by police in 48 states, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said earlier this spring.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram has previously warned of the danger it poses, saying xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even more lethal.

Worryingly, Shawn sees it becoming much more mainstream.

It’s like when ecstasy strikes. In the beginning, the only group of people who did it were those who went to raves. And then it exploded. And then Molly, and now fentanyl. And now the fentanyl mixed with other things like the tranquilizer.

It doesn’t end, he added.