Martin, 45, has been addicted to opioids for years and has seen the deadly and addictive fentanyl replace heroin in New York. He also now wants to avoid falling into the trap of “Tranq,” a cocktail of substances that can cause horrific wounds on the skin and make overdoses more difficult.
Sometimes deep wounds
“It’s not a good experience, it leaves holes in your body, in your skin,” Martin breathes, his voice sometimes trembling, during a visit to St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction, a charity and needle exchange organization that has been in the Bronx since 1990 .
He himself has wounds on his legs or arms. A sign that he was able to inject himself with Xylazine, also known as “Tranq”, without his knowledge and that his wounds, which can eat away at the skin and turn black, appear elsewhere than in the injection zone.
“It eats meat like a crocodile,” says Martin, who declined to give his name.
Often combined with fentanyl
Xylazine, an animal tranquilizer, isn’t approved for human use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but it has made inroads into the volatile, designer-dominated US illicit drug market. Until he was classified as an “emerging threat” by the White House last April.
It is readily available online and is very often paired with fentanyl, the synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin, which has seen the country’s fatal drug overdose figure soar to almost 110,000 in 2022 Record.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the estimated number of fatal xylazine overdoses in the United States has increased from 260 in 2018 to 3,480 in 2021. If Philadelphia is the epicenter of “tranq,” New York isn’t spared either: 19% of opioid overdoses, or 419 deaths, also involved xylazine in 2021, according to the city.
Amputation is sometimes necessary
Martin tries to avoid this cocktail because it “blows” him for hours.
“It’s hard, but what are you going to do when you’re addicted? “He lets go.
Wound nurses at St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction see wounds with increasing frequency as they drive their vans onto the streets of the Bronx to bring people medical supplies, clean syringes, fentanyl tests, groceries, or just a little advice and words of comfort in extreme difficulty.
In a photo taken by a nurse in the field, a patient’s skin shows many wounds, some deep. “Wounds can get worse to the bone (…) Sometimes people need an amputation or a skin graft,” she adds.
A complicated mission for the investigators
The United States is already reeling from the opioid crisis.
The city of New York and associations rely on naloxone, a nasal spray that serves as an antidote in the event of a fentanyl overdose. However, by slowing down breathing and heart rate, xylazine further complicates the situation.
The animal-approved product doesn’t have federal “controlled substance” status like hard drugs, which complicates the job of investigators, New York narcotics special attorney Bridget Brennan said.
Initiatives in St. Ann’s
“We can keep an eye on it. But even if we found a large quantity of it, we wouldn’t be able to sue anyone for it” and therefore “won’t go back to the source,” she explains.
St. Ann’s believes the emergence of new blends is due to a policy of criminalizing drug addicts. The center participates in a New York program that allows consumers to test their drugs for risks. The initiative will also allow the city’s health services to monitor changes in the illicit market in real time.