Towns that dread sundown, tranq edition

There are incredibly awful signs that the drug epidemic is about to get bad and hurt hard.. Sure, you’re thinking.. it decimated cities and small towns, it led to crumbling infrastructure issues, and it destroyed countless lives and families. How could it get worse, you may exclaim!

Unfortunately the future will look more like a zombie horror movie than reality. Throw everything you know about the opioid epidemic out the window.

… benzo dope and tranq has been on our door steps for years .. quietly it has now been spliced into 90% of the drug supply in Kensington and Philadelphia…

That’s the epicenter at the moment.. heartbreaking and ghoulish videos of people with amputated limbs and skin falling off makes the scenery appear to be more akin to a horror movie than reality.

But it is a reality.

And soon it will be a reality for other cities and small towns throughout the United States as the drugs overtake the current opioid supplies there too.

We have long talked about how America is becoming filled with towns that dread sundown—now they are going to dread even waking up…

Nothing but terrible as most of society continues to marginalize and ignore a growing amount of people doped and dying. With no help in sight except the tired volunteers to non-profits trying to keep their heads above water in a wave of gruesome deaths and overdoses..

So how did we get here..
Why all of the sudden?

Well.. it’s not really all of the sudden.

Way back in 2016 when Barack Obama was still president, we were among those reporting how an elephant tranquilizer laced into opioids was hitting streets.

There were reports at the time that Cincinnati was seeing a high degree of deaths due to tranq..

In 2019, “tranq dope” was already making its rounds in Philadelphia,

Long before that, Amy Winehouse died in 2011 after buying drugs that included Ketamine..

Tranq was making some waves.. and some headlines.

But by the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, we were barraged with horrific headlines and ghoulish photos of the effects of tranq. Ground zero appeared to be–and still appears to be–Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia. There are countless videos on social media of people walking the open air drug market. But the newfound issue being seen: Limbs and appendages falling to the ground, skin rotting, and bones being exposed…

More than 90 percent of Philadelphia’s lab-tested dope samples were positive for xylazine, according to the most recent data.

Xylazine is a sedative, anesthetic, tranquilizer, muscle relaxant and analgesic used by veterinarians to facilitate surgical procedures, safe handling and diagnostic testing in animals. It is most commonly used, with varying dosages, in cats, dogs, horses, sheep, and cattle, although it is also approved by the FDA to be used in elk, fallow deer, rats, mule deer, sika deer, and white-tailed deer.

Xylazine is most often used in tandem with other drugs that have similar effects. Ketamine, for instance, is commonly used in conjunction with xylazine to ensure a reliable dose of anesthesia.

(PS, here is an official comparison of xylazine and ketamine)

This is what was reported back in January of 2023 about the dope supply in Philly:

“It’s too late for Philly,” said Shawn Westfahl, an outreach worker with Prevention Point Philadelphia, a 30-year-old health services center in Kensington, the neighborhood at the epicenter of the city’s drug trade. “Philly’s supply is saturated. If other places around the country have a choice to avoid it, they need to hear our story.”

Doctors are perplexed by how xylazine causes wounds so extreme that they initially resemble chemical burns. They may not even appear at injection sites, but often on shins and forearms.

In February, the New York POST reported that the zombie drug tranq was not actively rotting skin in other cities across the United States, making its way from Philadelphia freedom land to other locales..

The New York TIMES went in depth into the skin rotting animal sedative nightmare giving us all tranq dope nightmares in towns that dread sundown.

In March 2023, it was beginning to make major headlines with networks like CNN showcasing the fresh horrors of tranq dope in Philadelphia. It’s killing people in bigger numbers.

Not only we medics fearing sundown, but all of us now are.. This from CNN:

“It is absolutely horrible. That’s the reality, though,” said James Sherman, known as Sherm around Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, where he once used drugs and where he now tries to help those still on the streets.  
The need for help has become more urgent over the last three years, as the animal tranquilizer xylazine, also called tranq, has become a bigger part of Philly’s street fentanyl supply. Xylazine can cause large wounds that won’t heal, no matter where you inject it and they can appear even if you snort it or smoke it. Infections are common and can even lead to amputations.  
“Some people aren’t ready to see that yet,” Sherman said. “It’s literally people’s flesh rotting, and you can smell it.”  

The tranq effect has led to amputations..

There is another video on Youtube showcasing an addict who has become afflicted by limbs rotting due to drugs laced with tranq..

Not only sores and wounds.. The drug has side effects like “tranq walk,” where people seem unaware of their surroundings. Over the last several years, deaths by synthetic opioids have been on a sharp incline while overdose deaths by heroin have dropped off.

ylazine is in  9 out of 10 samples of lab-tested dope in Philadelphia. “What we’re seeing is the bags of fentanyl sometimes don’t have fentanyl … it’s just xylazine,” he said.   

Xylazine is most concentrated in Philadelphia, according to Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy told CNN for their most recent report.