In the USA, drug addicts have recently been turning to a sedative that was actually developed for veterinary medicine. Xylazine not only increases the high but also causes deep wounds.
The generator roars at the Howard County Health Department’s mobile drug help center, south of Baltimore. Today the converted camper sits in an otherwise deserted parking lot, next to an aid facility for the homeless.
Craig, his eyes in deep sockets, his black baseball cap backwards on his head, is standing at the door of the camper and is still considering whether he wants to have a rapid test for hepatitis C done here. “I’ve been taking opioids for ten years now. But now there’s this stuff in there, xylazine. It puts you straight to sleep. And when you wake up, you want the next dose straight away.”
While Craig is talking, his girlfriend Natalie nods her head vigorously: The delicate woman, who looks much younger than 27, has also been addicted for years. At first they didn’t even know what exactly they were taking, the two say. They only found out after taking a drug test that the mobile counseling center offers. And now all they want is the “pink stuff,” as they call it. Because it increases her drug high even more.
The tissue dies
Natalie, who doesn’t inject her drugs but sniffs, has a handful of sores on her nose and all over her face – and a large bruise on her chin. Craig explains: “That’s from the time she fell. Well, in that sense, that was the xylazine too. Because she just passed out and just fell over.”
Xylazine is actually a powerful veterinary sedative, and it causes large, deep wounds in many addicts. The tissue dies.
The helpers are overwhelmed
Craig and Natalie don’t have skin ulcers like that yet. But there are many other addicts who can pick up clean needles, stoves, sterilized water and everything else from the mobile drug help center so that the HIV virus or other diseases do not add to the drug addiction.
“Today someone came with wounds in the genital area. I gave him some bandages,” says Arron Hall, one of the drug workers from the health department. Like everyone who works here, the 42-year-old used to be dependent.
Today he advises others on how they can live relatively healthily with their addiction or get help with withdrawal. However, xylazine and the wounds that the drug causes are overwhelming for him and his colleagues: “I’m not a doctor. I don’t know exactly how to treat wounds like that. I don’t go to them. If it were on the arm, maybe – but in Genital area? Well.”
Significantly increasing numbers
In the past few months, says Arron, three times as many people have come to the mobile drug help center as two years ago. And even if they don’t keep statistics, many people take xylazine.
Mixed with the highly potent and therefore often fatal fentanyl, a dose can be purchased for as little as five dollars. Experts don’t know exactly where it comes from or when it is added to the other drugs.
From the big cities to the rural areas
Until a few years ago, xylazine use was concentrated in drug scenes in major cities like Philadelphia. It is now also very common in rural suburbs.
Emily Keller is the special secretary of state for combating the opioid crisis in Maryland: “Statistically speaking, the proportion of it in our illegal drugs is decreasing. But it’s getting a lot of media attention, and that’s a good thing. Because we want people to know “What they take. So that they can take precautions.”
The zombie drug – so called because addicts move so angularly and uncontrollably when intoxicated – makes it even more difficult to get off drugs, says the State Secretary: “If someone has a serious injury and actually wants to go to rehab – the rehab clinics are not for that equipped to treat such wounds. So it complicates an already very complicated situation.”
“I’m just so tired of this life”
Craig and Natalie from Jessup also want to go through rehab: “I’m just so tired of this life,” says Natalie. The two have been living alternately in the car or in hotels for months. She earns money through online sex work.
But Natalie also knows that the next time she gets high from xylazine and fentanyl, she won’t care anymore.