In which I discuss injecting xylazine sourced from a veterinary lab during my wayward youth, which was a lackluster experience if ever there was one. For those of you who don't know, xylazine is now being added to fentanyl throughout the United States. Perversely, this "tranq" or "tranq dope" has gathered a loyal, if incapacitated, following in areas like Kensington in Philadelphia.
Chemical structure of xylazine (C12H16N2S) in case you cared, which you probably don't. It's very similar in structure to phenothiazines such as chlorpromazine - that's the famous Thorazine "shot in the ass" that they give you if you have a meltdown in a psych ward.
WHAT IS XYLAZINE, HYPED AS THE NEWEST "ZOMBIE DRUG"?
If you read my RIP, Gabapentin post, then you know that the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine, most often used for horses, has long been added to heroin and other recreational drugs in Puerto Rico and other places. It is not currently a federally controlled substance in the US, although I suspect that this will soon change.
Xylazine is popping up in the news these days because it is being detected more and more often in fentanyl samples confiscated in the Northeast. In places like Kensington, Philadelphia, this so-called "tranq dope" has attracted a loyal following of users who crave the catatonia that it induces. Alarmingly, in YouTube interviews with these tranq devotees, they describe a withdrawal syndrome worse even that that caused by fentanyl.
There are two particularly worrying things about xylazine. First, it causes extensive, necrotic ulcers (see image further down). These festering wounds have earned it the moniker "zombie drug," and they can begin to form after several days to two weeks of use. Although users commonly believe that these xylazine lesions occur only at injection sites, this is not true: They result from changes in circulation wrought by the drug throughout the body, regardless of how the xylazine is ingested, and can therefore appear anywhere. Observers have drawn comparisons to Russia's fever dream of a Krokodil epidemic, which Vice published some decent, if yellow, coverage on: Krokodil: Russia's Deadliest Drug (NSFW) - YouTube.
The second frightening thing about xylazine is that because it is not an opioid, the opioid antagonist Narcan (naloxone) will not work to reverse its effects. This means that EMTs and other medical professionals no longer have a "quick fix" for ODs in their arsenals; more patients will require intubation and intensive care (if they even make it to the hospital). In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has published data indicating that "Xylazine-involved overdose deaths in the US rose from 102 in 2018 to 3468 in 2021, and 99.1% of these deaths also involved fentanyl."
XYLAZINE TRIP REPORT: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I SHOT XYLAZINE IN MY WAYWARD YOUTH
As an Animal Physiology concentration within the biology major at my university, many of my upper-level courses in immunology, endocrinology, and other subjects were held at the vet school (our medical school was off-site in a major city, so if you wanted to study human medicine, sheep and lizards were as close as you could get as an undergrad). One day, I was walking back from a lab that involved stringing up rat uteri in physiologic solution and then adding pregnancy and labor hormones to see how they reacted. Afterward, I thanked God for the simplicity of having a penis as I strolled through an area where horses were kept prior to examination or operation. Not three yards in, my wandering chemical connoisseur eyes caught sight of an empty stall in which there was a steel table with a bottle of (liquid) medicine on it. I didn't even bother to check the label before swiping it; before the hearing- and speech-impaired good angel on my right shoulder could slap me into my senses, the bad angel in his throne on the other side promised that he would be my lookout as I grabbed the bottle and stashed it in my bookbag.
Three hours later, after putting my esteemed education to use by reviewing the scientific literature on xylazine to estimate a mg / kg dosage conversion from horses to humans, I selected one of the syringes that I kept on my desk in an organizer that also held my pens and pencils. I drew up a modest 0.8 mL of the solution and injected it into the median cubital of my left arm (that's that big vein in the crook of your arm that phlebotomists usually go to first).
My heart thrummed as I ran to the bathroom (JC, is this stuff a laxative?). I felt a tingling in my fingers as I waited for it to hit (God, please don't let me die on the toilet). The buzzing built as I finished my business and went back to my room, envisioning a slow-fuse experience as I yearned for that great warm wave of chemical alteration. Ten more minutes ticked by; I waited patiently for the xylazine to take effect even though no psychoactive chemical put directly into a vein should take that long to work. Still nothing. What I had felt was pure placebo.
My hopes were high: I had once tried diethyl ether, an old-school anesthetic of Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas fame / shame*, which delivered me and my genetics lab fruit flies one of the most heady, aeronautic, and euphoric highs of our lives. On account of that experience, and even though xylazine has quite a different chemical structure from ether, I dared to dream that I was discovering the next big thing.
*As Hunter S. Thompson put it, "There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."
Dosage conversions between species are notoriously tough to gauge, and like every experienced psychonaut who came up on Erowid, I had started with what I believed to be a threshold dose. For round two later that evening, I selected a larger syringe and drew up about 2.5 times my original dose. Maybe I shouldn't inject a chemical meant for horses directly into my veins, I reconsidered as I drew back the plunger and saw a red trickle. Just kidding; I never thought that.
Ten seconds later: Here it is. I felt dizzy in that way that makes you aware that all of your atoms are vibrating restlessly, expressively, incessantly. I moved from my couch to my bed in case I lost consciousness. By two or three minutes in, the dizziness had become uncomfortably strong without making me feel like I needed to close my eyes and "sleep." As I stared at my ceiling, I noticed a sort of streaming-water effect in my peripheral vision, in which only a small, central circle of clear sight remained. Meanwhile, the honeybees continued their hive-building in my head, limbs, and supposedly vital organs.
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a druggie who has been denied his expected high. For the next several minutes, I waited to advance past this plateau. I pined for a rainbow-beamed euphoria to abduct me to a better place; a bangin' body buzz from some chemical with an alpha-male backbone embracing every one of my cells like a soulmate; a dissociative elevator that would carry me sideways into another dimension where eldritch gods reigned.
Ten more minutes and no change. My journal was next to my bed, so I scrawled one of those quintessentially Millennial ":/" emojis next to my second xylazine entry. Thirty minutes later, I sublimated myself into sleep and had pleasant, unremarkable dreams.
For my third xylazine experience, I perched on the edge of my couch as I injected a dose that was about nine times my starting one. Provided that my horse-human conversions were on point, this amount should've been enough to bring me to the brink of unconsciousness; anything more would be dangerous unless I was in the hospital under a full anesthesia protocol.
I had hardly had the two seconds necessary to remove the needle with the xylazine in it from my arm before the goblin-y drug seized me by the ankles and dragged me down my ladder of consciousness, which was likely missing a few rungs on account of prior shenanigans. As I plummeted downward, I had the same last thought that any 20-year-old man would have while preparing for death: God, I hope I didn't leave any porn open on my computer. By five seconds after injection, I was out. There was no thrilling rush, no burgeoning euphoria. Nothing. Just black.
Three hours and 30-some-odd minutes later, I awoke on the floor of my apartment. It took me a few seconds to recognize the base of my shabby couch next to me (God, who pairs bright red with dark purple? I wondered before remembering that it was me).
For the next several hours, I had a minor headache and a lingering dizziness, but aside from that, I felt okay. If there was one kind thing that I could say about my experience with xylazine, I reflected, it was that it didn't cause the kind of intense, hours- or days-long hangover that the tri-drug cocktail currently favored for general anesthesia (in humans) often does.
Because my esteemed STEM education had instilled nothing in me if not the importance of replication, I tried xylazine twice more at similar doses before I threw a drug out for the first and only time in my life. Xylazine is the ultimate surgical anesthetic: Take a little, feel nothing; take a little more, feel dizzy; take a lot, you're unconscious. There is no benzo serenity, no barbiturate body-massage, not even some zany hallucinations, as with ether or ketamine. It's worthless. Any dealer who tells you that this chemical has recreational value is a liar or an idiot (and let's be honest, most dealers selling fentanyl are probably both).
Mild to moderate lesions caused by xylazine use. Arms, legs, digits, and noses appear to be common sites. Do not Google "Xylazine lesions" unless you are prepared to see rotten skin, subcutaneous fat, and muscle, which leaves exposed bone that sometimes spans entire limbs. Amputation is necessary in many cases. Photo taken from the Cornerstone Healing Center, which has more information on the etiology and treatment of such sores.
FINAL THOUGHTS FOR ANYONE YOUNG, BORED, OR STUPID ENOUGH TO LISTEN TO ME
Even after experiencing life-threatening physical addiction to two classes of mind-altering substances, I have complicated feelings about taking chemicals to alter brain chemistry. In fact, if someone asked me today how I feel about drugs, my answer would be that it would depend on which drugs they were talking about (and I don't mean that in a glib way). Certain drugs, such as mushrooms and acid, have given me some of the most beautiful, powerful, and spiritual experiences of my life. They have reinforced my connection to other people, helped me to see our weird, gorgeous universe for the interconnected marvel that it is, and allowed me to explore the innermost reaches of myself without fear or judgment.
On the other hand, my experience with addictive drugs that cause physical dependence, whether prescribed or not, has been that they are the keys to the doors of the real, capitalized Hell. Even still, I acknowledge that those same drugs can be life-changing in a positive way for people who need them for pain or anxiety and who use them as prescribed.
I also recognize that much of the damage caused by my addiction was in fact a result of drug prohibition, which drives prices up, quality down, and leads to ever-more desperate behavior on the part of all involved. Moreover - based on the frequency of mental health problems on both sides of my family that aren't related to addiction and how depressed and anxious I felt before using drugs regularly - I think that perhaps I would have killed myself or just become a truly miserable, awful person (irony) if I didn't have my chemical escape.
I'm telling you all of this because I'm feeling philosophical but also as a preamble to my final (drum roll) conclusion about xylazine. I am a person who appreciates chemicals, even the rarer, odder ones that many people find scary or pointless (more posts to come on those). I have tried dozens, if not hundreds, of mind-altering chemicals and devoted years of my life to studying biology and chemistry both formally and through extensive self-experimentation. Xylazine is garbage; simple as. It has no place in the human recreational pantheon, and, frankly, I think that we can do a little better for our friends the horses, as well.
If you enjoy trip report-type posts, check out The Incandescent Now, a fraught acid trip that I wrote up in lightly fictionalized form.
Wow. Rich and honest writing! Do it more often, a lot more often. I’d read your books.
This is a lot.
Your story telling is impeccable.
“Zombie drugs” I would assume the purpose of consuming any type of drug is to feel good right?
I’ve always wanted to try mushrooms but the thought of it being a fungus grosses me out lol.