Krokodil

[Slybacon]

Makes me wonder if there is more to this then meets the eye.... I mean who could possibly willfully get to a point where they need to amputate.....

[poisonshroom]

Addiction. Think requiem for a dream. That stuff actually happens (not only with Krokodil) - Having never been addicted to any injectables i wouldnt know exactly how one could continue using until its that bad, but i think its more that they put off getting help until even the painkillers they are putting directly into their veins doesnt stop it from hurting. it could also be an extreme form of not realising how bad something is until someone says "hey you really need help) - for example a friend of mine who used to be fit and muscular and had a generally healthy lifestyle got into speed (weed and pills first then injecting), and over a couple of months he became very skinny and unhealthy looking and stopped being active and eating well. He didnt even notice until myself and a friend sat him down and talked about it. He said it was like when he looked in the mirror he saw the same person, but everyone else could see he was going downhill rapidly. Maybe a chronic addiction has the same effect, but more severe (to the point of requiring amputation). I doubt many of the people that use krocodil have friends that arent also addicted to it who can tell them they need help.

Its sad though

[tripsis]

I think poisonshroom has the right of it. Once people are so utterly addicted, they may not know how far gone they are until it is too late, and even if they can see the damage being done, the physical need to inject again overrides the logical decision to stop. I don't think they wilfully get to that point at all. I think they have lost their will and have become slaves to the drug that they are addicted to.

[Slybacon]

I simply can't imagine this. I always feel incontrol.

This scares me. Not being in control, knowing what can happen if I lose it.

[tripsis]

It's a pretty scary scenario, having so little control that you could actually allow your limbs to rot away while you're will alive and then ultimately kill yourself through addiction. But long-term heroin use destroys your body too, not in the same way, but in ways bad enough. It's a nice thought, thinking you would always have control, but the reality is probably quite different.

Long-term effects of heroin appear after repeated use for some period of time. Chronic users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, cellulites, and liver disease. Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health condition of the abuser, as well as from heroin’s depressing effects on respiration. In addition to the effects of the drug itself, street heroin may have additives that do not really dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs. With regular heroin use, tolerance develops. This means the abuser must use more heroin to achieve the same intensity or effect.

Source (information taken from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)).

[7baz]

part of the issue is unlike here in most western countries.. in russia you dont need a prescription.

you are free and can freely buy what ever drugs you need over a counter at a chemist.

also take note :

there codeine / morphine is not the same as ours here in Australia.

what your seeing here is a result of gangrene.

i think its rather sad.

[qualia]

incase you're wondering, what i said about haarp and the reptillians is complete bullshit, i made it up walking back from the shops i thought it sounded funny at the time. theres numerous fundamental flaws with what i said but it's all bullshit, incase you hadn't come to that conclusion yet.

but yeah, after seeing some of my one time friends succumb to meth, i can see how one can be unaware of physical changes, but this seems to extreme to not be aware of, maybe desomorphine is so much stronger that heroin that you simply aren't aware of anything when you're in that space. i don't know, i wont be finding out though,,

[tripsis]

It was pretty obvious that it was tongue-in-cheek qualia.

[qualia]

krokodil:

[rahli]

Krokodil :

[DarkSpark]

I take it the woman in that first picture you posted DarkSpark is already dead? Not exactly what I'd consider early stages.

 

I would say so yes, however the symptoms she is showing are only the earlier stages of what is to be expected from a Krokodil addict. The scaly skin, althought he facial brusing to me stinks of a bashing, more that likely induced by her inability to even afford the minimal price of this horrid drug, although based on the time it lasts compared to the price it isn't THAT much cheaper in the long run, just in the short term...

Makes me wonder if there is more to this then meets the eye.... I mean who could possibly willfully get to a point where they need to amputate.....

 

Yep, its hard to grasp but addiction can be a completely overpowering force. People are willing to give up their families, friends and everything in their lives for another hit of some drugs. Even in australia you can see the burnt away nostrils of many drug abusers, or reformed abusers, and the scabs and peeling of their flesh from dodgy needles. To those of us not suffering addiction it is unfathomable. But to someone who is so completely dependent on the substance ignorance of ones own issues, regardless of how enormous and deadly they are, is easy.

I think poisonshroom has the right of it. Once people are so utterly addicted, they may not know how far gone they are until it is too late, and even if they can see the damage being done, the physical need to inject again overrides the logical decision to stop. I don't think they wilfully get to that point at all. I think they have lost their will and have become slaves to the drug that they are addicted to.

 

This sums it up perfectly.

For me personally cannabis was at a similar stage until i had my break. Less the harming myself. However although i had consciously decided to stop smoking as we couldn't afford it i would still get a quarter on tick and smoke it before pay day even though i knew it meant that i wouldn't be able to get more. Then i would get more instead of paying bills. Looking back on this makes me scared shitless to think what would happen with me on an actual PHYSICALLY addictive substance. Weed itself isn't even addictive and yet i still got to that point. So in some ways i can understand why people still inject when they know how bad it is for them.

[coin]

...which is why a lot of people don't agree that cannabis isn't "physically" addictive (quotes are yours)...I think it just depends on individual chemistry...some people will exhibit extreme and desperate/shameful behavior to obtain & use it. i've seen a friend in obvious distress, crawling around on the carpet looking for dropped bits of cannabis and scraping black tar out of bong stems once he ran out of dope. the physical/psychological delineation is arbitrary...pain is pain.

I'm not sure why there's discussion here about "how can they let it get so far?" [the addiction/gangrene, etc.] ... if heroin in australia was so filthy, of course addicts would still get to this stage (imho) ... personally I think an addict is waiting to die but they're just killing the pain in the meantime. it's the "human condition" ... but how far would such an epidemic get here (in Australia) before society found it unacceptable? Only the people lucky enough to have someone who cares enough to force them into rehab can get a chance to get some perspective and maybe eventually say "I would have kept on at it until I was dead if someone hadn't intervened"

why do people keep smoking cigarettes once they get diagnosed with cancer? keep drinking alcohol despite gastric ulcers (vomiting blood), pancreatic cancer, etc?

the amazing thing is that they don't commit suicide -- they still want to live, so they just keep trying to kill the pain

Edited June 29, 2011 by coin

[DarkSpark]

the amazing thing is that they don't commit suicide -- they still want to live, so they just keep trying to kill the pain

 

a brilliant statement.

The people need help, sadly no-one wants to give it as the typical "worthless junkie" stereotype is applied. People don't seem to realise that a junkie is a real person who was once just like them until drugs took control.

Also, my weed habit was a way of relieving stress, a large portion of which was due to the fact i was spending money on cannabis (a real catch 22 situation). Having moved to a less stressful environment i have found it easy to go without. I didn't have anyone force me to quit i elected to do it as i didn't feel the need to smoke anymore. However i am/will be smoking again in much more moderation with my priorities in a substantially different order. Cannabis in itself isn't addictive, however the ability to escape from ones stresses is very addictive, hence it is considered psychologically addictive. The cravings are bearable, but if you aren't strong enough you just cave.

[rahli]

OVER THE COUNTER HABITS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GETTING HIGH IN RUSSIA

St. Petersburg’s drug situation was always better than Moscow’s. In fact most of the “fast” shit (ecstasy and meth) was produced in “Peter” and distributed to Moscow for double the price. St. Pete resisted cheap smack when it first hit about ten years ago, but eventually surrendered after most of the trendy pro-West boys and gals saw Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction. I swear these two films killed more Russians of my generation than fucking Afghanistan. For a while it seemed like Muscovite junkies and St. Pete’s University kids were competing for body counts as each kept upping the ante from heavily-cut brown crap to china white until both sides were all dead.

After the first wave of junkies died, everyone switched to Phentanyl, a synthetic opiate that’s 100 times stronger than heroin. Then one day Phentanyl was responsible for more than 130 deaths. The FSB (which is like the FBI but waaaay scarier) gassed the “Nord-Ost” hostages with it in October 2002 to prevent some Chechen mujahadeen from blowing the building up with 900 or so hostages inside. The women and children simply OD’d on the stuff. Oops! It was easy to spot on TV, all those blue faces with their heads tilted back, mouths open. All of a sudden Phentanyl was evil in the public’s mind and had to be eradicated. Ironically the task was left up to the FSB, the ones that made it evil in the first place.

Within weeks all the Phentanyl was gone and all the dealers were either dead or in jail. Now what? You’ve got a nation of junkies and a corrupt government with piles of opiates nobody wants to ever see again. Well, what do you think’s going to happen?

Alex, a 34-year-old addict who’s lived in St. Petersburg and Moscow says, “The second all the Phentanyl and heroin dissapeared, codeine cough pills magically showed up in drugstores all over the country. You could see those empty blue packages everywhere. They even went as far as advertising these pills on national TV. Obviously, the government was up to something.” Indeed, by 2003 almost all illegal opiates in Moscow had been replaced with these popular over-the-counter codeine pills.

“If you take 20 pills of Kodelak, which is 160 mg of codeine phosphate, you get a good nod going,” reports Alex. “I take 60 pills a day. My habit was about $200 daily when it was heroin. Now it’s 300 bucks a month, thanks to Kodelak. And I don’t need to rob or steal or anything like that to keep myself going!”

The invisible hand of capitalism has spoken: “Legalize it.”

VLAD OSOVSKY

 

Link

[vual]

something fishy is going on here...

something real fishy. (no phun intended)

why did the swedish not have these side effects with Desomorphine?

is it simply because the russian junkies are shooting up bad chemestry....

or something more evil is going on...

in reagrds to the pcitures it seems some are only a few months old, your guaranteed to die within 3years it seems. simply missing a vein causes major problems from the start injecting that dirty shit directly into your mussles....

maybe the problem comes form the injection into there mussles (missing vein) and not from the Desomorphine itself, or maybe it comes from the fact that they are not purifying it, either way this smells fishy and i wish the media would do more research....

I dont get it, i mean if you shoot the cleanest heroin directly into your mussle with a rusty dirty needle its going to cause some problems including abcess's and all that dirty shitm, this "krocodile phanomanom" seems like bad steralization methods and shitty cooks, not Desomorphine.

Not for the weak of heart:

http://www.bestgore.com/medical/brutal-effects-krokodil-desomorphine-drug-addicted-russia/

Edited February 25, 2012 by vual

[Distracted]

vual i believe it's injecting the incomplete reactions involving iodine that is bad, then no medical attention makes it get worse.

Why go to a hospital for pain/infection when you can just self medicate with more krokodil? :D

[nabraxas]

As the Wiki article 7Baz posted says this is fairly old news going back to 02, i remember talking on another forum to a Russian user back in 2006? about the whole process.

[AndyAmine.]

Besides all the other junk going on, from what Ive read about it RP is insoluble in almost everything and can have a very small particle size so no doubt they are injecting good amounts of it.

This results in all the valves and capillaries etc getting clogged leading to necrosis/gangrene/infection etc.,

This is a pretty good VICE doco about it:

http://www.vice.com/vice-news/siberia-krokodil-tears-part-1