The Curse of the Crocodile: Russia's Deadly Designer Drug

[Swede]

The new arrivals at the drug rehab center in Chichevo, a tiny village that is a two hours' drive east of Moscow, are usually given two weeks without chores to recover from the nausea, pain and sleeplessness of withdrawal. After that, between Bible study and prayer (the center is run by Pentecostals), they have to start chopping firewood, hauling water from the village well or otherwise helping around the old wooden house. But a lot more leeway was allowed in the case of Irina Pavlova, the only resident at the center who is addicted to krokodil, or crocodile, Russia's deadliest new designer drug.

There is no good medical explanation for why Pavlova survived her addiction. The average user of krokodil, a dirty cousin of morphine that is spreading like a virus among Russian youth, does not live longer than two or three years, and the few who manage to quit usually come away disfigured. But Pavlova says she injected the drug nearly every day for six years, having learned to cook it in her brother's kitchen. "God must have protected me," she says. But the addiction still left some of its trademark scars. She developed a speech impediment, and her pale blue eyes have something of a lobotomy patient's vacant gaze. "Her motor skills are shot from the brain damage," says Andrei Yatsenko, the house manager, who was addicted to heroin for seven years. "She'll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something. So we try to be gentle with her."



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2078355,00.html#ixzz1QJhXyKfo

[bengalherder]

1. Red phosphorus from matchboxes is used to make this stuff.

Phosphorus was the 19th century cause of 'phosphorus jaw', a condition that brought on one of the first industrial strikes in the western world.

Beyond that, it is scary that the only drug rehab in Russia is run by pentecostals. The 'family honor' killings by Russian pentecostal men in this country (some as recently as a few years ago in Sacramento CA) should be a warning. Out of the frying pan and all that.

[grasswire]

4. I learn something new every day on DU

Never heard of this before.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. I am so glad you found and posted this.

Sounds like many of the same tainted ingredients that go into meth.
wonder how long it will take to show up here?

[formercia]

3. Red Phosphorous is not part of the final product.

It's just an Element that allows the conversion of one molecule into another.

[thereismore]

5. OMG

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/krokodil-the-drug-that-eats-junkies-2300787.html