Codeine is both harder to obtain(in usable amounts) and more expensive than heroin in the USA. It is difficult to imagine someone who it would be cheaper and easier for them to create desomorphine than to just buy heroin(find a barrel of codeine powder that rolled off a truck?!)
There is nothing inherently dangerous or flesh killing about desomorphine, it is the reactants not being properly removed after it is synthesized.
Yeah, see, that’s the stupid thing - I just don’t see a cost-savings for the addict here.
Maybe some of these loons saw videos on YouTube and thought “Daaaaaym! That shit is effed up, let’s try some!” using reverse insane troll logic or something.
I fear my niece and her “hardcore” friends will jump at the chance to try it, along with every other drug/combo they can find. I think they do this shit just to brag about it.
I’m thinking either one of two things.
This is a few drug nerds who seeing it online wanted to taste this exotic chemical.
Or some immigrants or people with connections to Russia mailed some, or some codeine tablets over. Drug users often hang on to old habits even when changing country(Hmong being mailed opium etc).
Excuse me, but ‘drug nerds’ are a bit more discerning than your average junkie. When you become desperate enough to shoot up with what amounts to untreated industrial waste, you’re something else. Not sure what exactly besides damaged, but definitely something else.
Why don’t they just take the codine? Why are they mixing with that crap?
I’ve done plenty of drugs, but I just never got the mindset that everything had to be Xtreme and edgy and crazy town.
Paracetamol-and-codeine tablets (e.g. Panadeine) are available over the counter in Europe and Australasia, and quite cheaply too.
I’d guess the desomorphine hit is more intense than pure codeine? Or maybe it’s easier to make desomorphine than to extract the codeine from the Panadeine?
Here’s a particularly nasty amputation video. The krokodil victim presents with a swollen, gangrenous, blackened foot. The other leg is wrapped in plastic. When the plastic is removed, the rotting flesh of the lower limb slides off the bone a bit like a loose sock.
Season to taste. :eek:
I really don’t know why these thoughts pop into my head. :smack:
Yeah, I don’t think this is going to become a big trend, least of all in the Southwest.
Codine does not “hit” like heroin or desomorphine - it is a much slower high, with a longer tail (similar to methodone, apparently). Desomorphine has a rapid hit but shorter tail that even heroin, leaving addicts chasing the next hit after a much shorter time interval.
Earlier thread on the subject:
Addictive drug “Krokodil” AKA Desomorphine rotting flesh off addicts bones- Warning GRAPHIC website thread started by astro 11-05-2011, with links to gruesome pics.
Salient observation at Post #4 (my bolding added):
Damn, when I saw the thread title I thought someone had brought over the Cold War-era Russian humor magazine to the US as a competitor for Mad. It’d be better if it was about that. I saw earelier threads about the drug, and articles elsewhere, with graphic pix. You’d have to be REALLY desperate to use this stuff. It makes “meth mouth” look like a benign affliction.
Then don’t make the same mistake that I did, and google “krokodil.” Yes, Google will give you pictures, and yes, they will be horrible.
Or for that matter, why not just do heroin? It seems like the better choice, which is not something I would have ever thought I’d say.
I read that krokodil is less expensive than heroin (I think it was in one of the linked articles, possibly in the other thread.)
It’s less expensive in Siberia, where codeine is over the counter. Maybe not so much in the US, where it’s prescription only. Can’t say I’ve really analyzed the matter, and wouldn’t know where to begin anyhow.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t krokodil-equivalents yet to be discovered that can be made with OTC ingredients in the US. It’s not exactly a high standard that needs to be achieved when “melts the flesh off your bones” isn’t a deal-breaker.
As of tonight up to 5 people in Joliet, Illinois are in the hospital due to krokodil use. Apparently, the did not cook it up themselves. It was sold to them as heroin, the difference not being apparent until bits of the users rotted up and fell off.
Some people are just evil.
This drug renders the Chinese puzzle box (for raising hell) obsolete.
It looks like maybe the impending epidemic in the US was overblown: Slate article.
Here’s hoping that’s the case.