Fentanyl - WTF? | GTAMotorcycle.com

Fentanyl - WTF?

Mad Mike

Mad Mike

Well-known member
I just sent condolences to another family I know who lost a son to a Fentanyl-related OD. That's 4 young men I knew inside 2 years -- in 40 years, I don't recall any other accidental deaths inside my circle of acquaintances.

Obviously, these boys were using opiates, they all were working men, 2 had families, not the type of skid-row or meth-house junkies you see on TV.

Is this getting really bad? Does anyone else have people known to you fall to Fentanyl?
 
Mad Mike said:
I just sent condolences to another family I know who lost a son to a Fentanyl-related OD. That's 4 young men I knew inside 2 years -- in 40 years, I don't recall any other accidental deaths inside my circle of acquaintances.

Obviously, these boys were using opiates, they all were working men, 2 had families, not the type of skid-row or meth-house junkies you see on TV.

Is this getting really bad? Does anyone else have people known to you fall to Fentanyl?
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No but I can add some insight. In the pharmaceutical world there’s something called the therapeutic index. This is the difference between the dose that kills and the dose that cures. You want it as big as possible. Fentanyl has a small therapeutic index, it needs to be very carefully dosed by professionals. The average drug user isn’t a professional. Fentanyl is in the same class of compounds as elephant tranquilizers.
 
Sorry to hear MM.

Sadly a lot of this is due to unintended consequences of drug laws and enforcement. Opioid addiction many times comes from injury and the use of pain killers. Once addicted this meant getting the drugs illegally to feed the habit after the Rx ran out There has been a crackdown on the pills that impacts the availability and therefore price of these drugs on the street, so...

The addicted people had to switch things up, for a while old school heroin was the street solution. Then came fentanyl and it became the answer for the addicted people (cheap and available), well it is much more potent and dangerous, even a small amount can be lethal.

The unintended consequences are enforcement pushed people not to all just quit but for many to move to a much more dangerous fix resulting in the current problems. While the stereotypical users are impacted so are everyday people that got addicted not for fun but by prescription.
 
Yes I have had acquaintances that lost children , and a guy in my extended social circle , and it’s not skids , it’s kids from large family money and dads that are lawyers and dentists .
It’s literally everywhere and odds are excellent you’ll eventually check out using it .


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It is also finding its way into other street drugs now that the genie is out of the bag. They have found it in cocaine and other street drugs, really WTF!
 
The Ontario Working for Workers act was just recently passed in to law.
It contains a lot of things, but one is to mandate Naloxone kits be available in “high risk” workplaces. Not just hospitals/emergency workers, but construction sites, bars/clubs, etc.

So yes? It’s getting bad enough to mandate these kinds of things by law.
 
Sorry to hear @Mad Mike and @crankcall that you've seen this in your circles. I've yet to see it (early 40s) in any of my social circles at all. But we do have young kids so hopefully it doesn't make it's way.

Doctors offered me something stronger than Tylenol following my last surgery and I outright said 'no thanks'. The morphine hit was good in the hospital but I didn't want the risk of becoming dependent on it.
 
jc100 said:
No but I can add some insight. In the pharmaceutical world there’s something called the therapeutic index. This is the difference between the dose that kills and the dose that cures. You want it as big as possible. Fentanyl has a small therapeutic index, it needs to be very carefully dosed by professionals. The average drug user isn’t a professional. Fentanyl is in the same class of compounds as elephant tranquilizers.
Click to expand...
Interesting graphic puts it into perspective.

1655915014545.png
 
Sorry to hear MM. Thankfully I don't know anyone personally.

Apparently street drugs are getting mixed with fentanyl to keep the potency up while upping the filler content. Obvious these aren't controlled lab conditions. One of the reasonable arguments to legalize street drugs. Sure they will cost more but at least somebody has done a QC check before you are the guinea pig that needs naloxone. I think these mixed drug deaths happen far more often than people intentionally taking fentanyl.

Some (all?) high schools are doing naloxone training now. Anyone can get a kit for "free" (taxpayer pays) along with training from their local pharmacy. I'll get one in the house before the kids reach double digits. Kids make stupid choices. When they get a bit older, I will probably make them learn how to use the kit. Too many instances of kids dropping at a party.

For my leg, they gave me hydro-morph and tramacet. They both actually worked therapeutically for me. Past drugs I have been given (T3, percocet, etc) did pretty much nothing for me. For the ones that didn't work for me, your body converts the codeine to morphine and the morphine helps the pain. Some people convert codeine to morphine well, I don't. I tried to take good drugs only first thing in the morning and before bed with max dose of Advil and Tylenol in between. When pain was mostly under control I took a few days off from good drugs. A week after surgery, for a few days I was in bad shape and continuous dosing of everything. When pain went down, I came off them as quickly as possible. Asked doc for a topup at one month checkup as I only had two left and if pain increased it would be a pain to get back to him. He said no bleeping way. I still have two left. Doc was right, I didn't need anymore.

EDIT:
FWIW, local paramedic calls seem to have a hell of a lot of OD's. They get administered naloxone do a lap at the hospital and repeat. I don't know if there are more OD's than before, it is partly related to Fentanyl or if it is related to Naloxone (either flying closer to the sun as you may be saved or people that would have been one and done now needing help many times).
 
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Mad Mike said:
Interesting graphic puts it into perspective.

View attachment 55937
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20210203-fentanyl-920x500.jpg


Carfentanyl seems to be getting into the country too though. Would you trust a backyard drug chemist to regulate the dose properly when 1 grain is enough to kill a person? It all goes back to trying to keep your kids educated and away from bad influences. 1 bad kid can mess 20 good kids lives up.
 
Very sorry to hear Mike.

I saw fentanyl used on my infant (NICU baby, complicated story) and man that stuff works fast... i can see the appeal. It's kinda special to have to work with staff (drs and nurses) to get a newborn weaned off safely from morphine while keeping him relatively painless, comfortable. I can't imagine how hard it must be to lose someone to something like this, esp when it takes so little for irreparable damage.
 
DownUnder said:
View attachment 55939


Carfentanyl seems to be getting into the country too though. Would you trust a backyard drug chemist to regulate the dose properly when 1 grain is enough to kill a person? It all goes back to trying to keep your kids educated and away from bad influences. 1 bad kid can mess 20 good kids lives up.
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That’s not even the most potent one either. There’s something called “the morphine rule” which is basically a template that all opiate like drugs must have in terms of structure. You can tune structures so that you get different “power” to the opiate effect. Codeine would be milder than morphine/heroin then fentanyl etc. You can tune it so it effectively becomes unusable. The tranquilizers that are used in darts to down rhinos etc have been tuned for that size of creature but would be lethal in a human. You can see the difference between heroin and the two fentanyl derivatives above so what this also means is that for a 1kg pack of fentanyl you can get 100x the doses you got for heroin so greater profits. Carfentanyl has no business being used on the streets for anything. Fentanyl is only just useful and can be used in dermal patches for prolonged painkilling effects with controlled dosing. They also use it in anaesthesiology and for setting broken bones etc.
 
jc100 said:
That’s not even the most potent one either. There’s something called “the morphine rule” which is basically a template that all opiate like drugs must have in terms of structure. You can tune structures so that you get different “power” to the opiate effect. Codeine would be milder than morphine/heroin then fentanyl etc. You can tune it so it effectively becomes unusable. The tranquilizers that are used in darts to down rhinos etc have been tuned for that size of creature but would be lethal in a human. You can see the difference between heroin and the two fentanyl derivatives above so what this also means is that for a 1kg pack of fentanyl you can get 100x the doses you got for heroin so greater profits. Carfentanyl has no business being used on the streets for anything. Fentanyl is only just useful and can be used in dermal patches for prolonged painkilling effects with controlled dosing. They also use it in anaesthesiology and for setting broken bones etc.
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Fentanyl plus midazalam is a common conscious sedation cocktail administered by medical professionals (for instance during colonoscopy). Quick acting and quick to wear off when procedure is done. Fentanyl is not the devil but when it is misused it quickly looks like it.
 
mimico_polak said:
Sorry to hear @Mad Mike and @crankcall that you've seen this in your circles. I've yet to see it (early 40s) in any of my social circles at all. But we do have young kids so hopefully it doesn't make it's way.

Doctors offered me something stronger than Tylenol following my last surgery and I outright said 'no thanks'. The morphine hit was good in the hospital but I didn't want the risk of becoming dependent on it.
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Only one of these boys was ever close, the rest were kids of friends and coworkers. The kid that died last week had a tough life, he grew up in foster homes, the first one was around the corner from me and a classmate of my eldest son. For years I made sure he had hockey gear and got registered with the local house league, I also drove him to games and practices. He moved to another city after grade 8 so we lost touch, my son stayed connected loosely thru his network of schoolmates.

I've been prescribed Oxys for pain in the past, they do work great but I didn't find them euphoric or intoxicating at all. I'm cautious -- only when the pain was excruciating, and only a 4 day's supply.
 
My condolances.

Fentanyl was in the good ol days. US's war on fentanyl got china to curb supply. They are now supplying all kind of nastier adulterants such as xylazine. Trying to cut supply has proven over and over to be ineffective.

VICE has an informative documentary on it.
 
One thing to note is that a person might get really ****** at you for removing their high with Naloxone.
I need to renew mine. Fortunately, it was never needed.
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I remember a bunch of us kids, early teens 1960's, hanging out and a pair of girls off to one side having a private talk. I found out later one girl needed to talk to someone because her boyfriend was hooked on heroin.

I was amazed that I knew someone that knew someone who knew someone that was on drugs. Now it's hard to find someone who doesn't know someone on one thing or another.

I was given morphine for a kidney stone about 40 years ago and my wife drove me home. If the house was on fire when we got there I probably would have said "Look at the pretty orange fire."

The really sad part is being on a job-site in Parkdale and seeing an absolutely stunning blonde standing in front of the site, jittery, hoping for a trick to pay for another hit of, I assume crack.

No one wants to connect the dots to the self centred greed that is IMO a big part of the problem.
 
Sorry for your loss MM!

Yes; I knew someone fairly well who died of a fentanyl OD, just last year. Knew him and his parents - all really nice people and family oriented plus hard workers (worked in the printing industry - all of them). Went on a few snowmo trips with him and his Dad in Quebec for several years. I knew he had weight issues but did not know when he got into the drugs. I became aware of that a few years ago. In and out of rehab. Parents tried 'tough love', all to no avail. The draw of that drug for Chris was just too strong. He was 42 years old I believe. The family still trying to deal with it all :(
 
An old coworker of mine had a son in his mid teens pass away a couple years ago. Good hockey player on a couple of rep teams, was starting to hang out with the wrong crowd, his father had a talk with him what he doing etc and the kid said nothing serious, just weed...2 weeks later or so he OD'd. Very sad.
 
I had hand surgery and opted to stay awake during it. They used the smallest amount of Fentanyl for the pain. I was pretty worried it wasn't going to be enough as they fillet my hand in front of me. Within a minute I was on cloud 9, laughing and joking with a doctor and nurse who were cutting my hand open. Hell of a powerful drug.
 
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