Fentanyl, Carfentanil and Overdose

I was first introduced to fentanyl in the early 2000’s. Before I ever got the idea to slit the patch open and combine the gel inside with saline and fill a nasal inhaler with the mixture or, like others I’ve known, just swallow the gel outright, I had already overdosed. I was always a mixer and when dealing with almost any drug, mixing can be dangerous, but when using fentanyl, reckless is the only word that comes to mind that adequately describes the activity. I was literally taking my life into my own hands.

Just getting high was never enough for me. It’s one thing to get high; maybe smoke some grass and drink some beer at a concert, dance, mingle and have a good time. It’s something else entirely to get so wasted that you literally nod out standing up. Or maybe at a stop light. How about at work? I’ve done all three. After some driver got out of his car and pounded on my window instead of a cop, or a sympathetic coworker found me instead of my boss, I would be grateful that I wasn’t caught and thought that I had slipped by without consequences yet again. This thinking would usually lead to some shallow self-reflection. I would think that, yeah, I got away this time, but what about the next? This would, in turn, lead to what is called a “moment of clarity,” where I would actually wonder why I felt the need to become a walking zombie everyday just to function. I would then worry about the possibility of overdose and fret over what I had become. I was a sad caricature of who I once was, but this self-reflection was fleeting and wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. I would be interrupted by a phone call or a visit, and all that thinking would go out the window, and then I would be off to the races again as soon as the high wore off or as soon as possible.

If you’re a dealer and can transport a pound of heroin or an ounce of fentanyl and make basically the same amount of money, maybe more with the ounce of fentanyl, which would you choose? I would choose the smaller package, because you don’t have to transport as much and it can be hidden much easier. I don’t believe that dealers on the street are TRYING to kill their customers, but I do think that when it comes to profit and ease, dealers will choose feasibility over safety. It’s simply a matter of looking at the thing from a business perspective. Business 101.

In the early 2000’s I was dealing with pharmaceutical grade fentanyl. It came in the form of a patch or in a lollypop called an “Actique.” I would usually mix these with Xanax and, on the night that I overdosed and had to be carried into the emergency room by some caring friends, Oxycontin. This is not what addicts on the street are dealing with today. The stuff on the street today is Mexican fentanyl; brewed in some clandestine laboratory, and of questionable origin and purity. Both are dangerous, don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say. Both will stop your heard in a minute. Unless you’re afflicted with some terminal illness and under the care of a doctor, you shouldn’t go anywhere near pharmaceutical grade fentanyl. It’s not a joke. When I overdosed, I was a healthy twenty-year-old kid. The thing with street fentanyl, is that you never know how pure it is, or even how much is in the package you’re buying. It’s literally like playing Russian roulette. You might as well just get a revolver and spin the cylinder, because in my experience, the odds are about the same.

Recently, as if addicts didn’t already have a myriad of poisons out there killing them, a drug called carfentanil has hit the street. Where plain old fentanyl can be up to a thousand times more powerful than morphine, carfentanil can be up to ten-thousand times more powerful. I like the header image above this post, because it shows you just how powerful it is. The vial marked “heroin” has the same opiate affect as the vial marked “fentanyl.” The carfentanyl vial contains a speck of the substance that will have the same effect as the amount in the heroin vial. The thing is, who knows how pure whichever chemical is used to cut that pack of heroin you’re buying or if said pack contains any heroin at all. Maybe you’re buying a pack that contains nothing but fentanyl or carfentanyl. That’s what happened to me, causing my most recent and final overdose. The one that finally scared me enough to stop.

I was going to Louisville almost daily to buy heroin. Two times in as many months, I’d overdosed at my dealer’s house and both times he and his girlfriend were able to revive me in ice baths. Waking up in one of those isn’t fun. The best way I can describe an overdose, is that it’s just like someone turning out the lights. It’s like the program that runs your brain, and the nerves that you use to interpret the bent and refracted light to see, are just turned off with the flip of a switch. Everything goes dark. Right up to that moment, you remember everything clearly. Mixing it up. Pulling it up into the syringe. Putting the spike into your arm and pulling back on the plunger until the mixture goes pink. Pushing the plunger down… Everything is fine for a second and then it’s just like, boom, someone flips the switch.

This particular time, I remember coming in and out of consciousness with all sorts of frantic activity going on around me. At one point I was on the floor and his girlfriend was crying, smacking me on my face, my head in her lap, as she rubbed my face with a cold wash cloth. I remember feeling one of her tear drops smack me on my cheek (plop) before I went under again. Then coming back in, someone was holding me up over the kitchen sink as they poured cold water over my head. Finally, coming to and sitting up with a jolt, wearing nothing except my boxers, in a bathtub full of water and ice, my dealer and his girlfriend all disheveled, soaked, her makeup running from crying, and out of breath, glaring at me with what looked like a mixture of anger and relief.

Whatever you may think about the situation and these two people, I was blessed to be there at that moment with them. I know people that would simply drag an overdosing addict out into the hallway and walk away. As far as dealers and addicts go, these two had heart. The insanity of the thing is this: I would show up the next day and just tell myself I was going to do less. And, less I did. When I overdosed that final time I did one quarter of one point. There are ten points in a gram, so what I did that day was no more than a speck.

I was willing to trade everything for that moment of relief. All that I was, all I would ever have or would ever be. Dealing pain out to my family from some twisted deck of cards. When you’re in that moment, as an addict, you think about none of these things. All you think about is silencing that voice in your mind screaming for more and the fear of the impending sickness. It’s all so subtle. For me alcohol lead to drugs, which in turn lead to harder drugs. There were starts and stops along the way, but once you’re an opiate addict, the euphoric recall is so powerful that you do it and do it and do it, and one day you turn around and see the swath of destruction you’ve wrought not only in your life, but in the lives of your loved ones. Then you’re trapped and it’s as though you’ve painted yourself into a corner. You never see the train until it’s on top of you.

I use this experience to illustrate what, the novice user or everyday person sees in the picture. That it only takes a speck of carfentanil, the most potent and dangerous drug I’ve ever encountered, to kill you.

I’ll leave you with this. You might be asking yourself, who came up with, and what would a drug like this be used for in the first place? The answer is shocking and when I found out, I was amazed that I was able put it into my vein and live to tell the tale. Carfentanil is an elephant tranquilizer.