Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies

Oleg glances furtively around him and, confident that nobody is watching, slips inside the entrance to a decaying Soviet-era block of flats, where Sasha is waiting for him. Ensconced in the dingy kitchen of one of the apartments, they empty the contents of a blue carrier bag that Oleg has brought with him – painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning oil, and an array of vials, syringes, and cooking implements.

Half an hour later, after much boiling, distilling, mixing and shaking, what remains is a caramel-coloured gunge held in the end of a syringe, and the acrid smell of burnt iodine in the air. Sasha fixes a dirty needle to the syringe and looks for a vein in his bruised forearm. After some time, he finds a suitable place, and hands the syringe to Oleg, telling him to inject the fluid. He closes his eyes, and takes the hit.

Russia has more heroin users than any other country in the world – up to two million, according to unofficial estimates. For most, their lot is a life of crime, stints in prison, probable contraction of HIV and hepatitis C, and an early death. As efforts to stem the flow of Afghan heroin into Russia bring some limited success, and the street price of the drug goes up, for those addicts who can't afford their next hit, an even more terrifying spectre has raised its head.


The home-made drug that Oleg and Sasha inject is known as krokodil, or "crocodile". It is desomorphine, a synthetic opiate many times more powerful than heroin that is created from a complex chain of mixing and chemical reactions, which the addicts perform from memory several times a day. While heroin costs from £20 to £60 per dose, desomorphine can be "cooked" from codeine-based headache pills that cost £2 per pack, and other household ingredients available cheaply from the markets.

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly. Worse follows. Oleg and Sasha have not been using for long, but Oleg has rotting sores on the back of his neck.

"If you miss the vein, that's an abscess straight away," says Sasha. Essentially, they are injecting poison directly into their flesh. One of their friends, in a neighbouring apartment block, is further down the line.

"She won't go to hospital, she just keeps injecting. Her flesh is falling off and she can hardly move anymore," says Sasha. Photographs of late-stage krokodil addicts are disturbing in the extreme. Flesh goes grey and peels away to leave bones exposed. People literally rot to death.

Russian heroin addicts first discovered how to make krokodil around four years ago, and there has been a steady rise in consumption, with a sudden peak in recent months. "Over the past five years, sales of codeine-based tablets have grown by dozens of times," says Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia's Drug Control Agency. "It's pretty obvious that it's not because everyone has suddenly developed headaches."

Heroin addiction kills 30,000 people per year in Russia – a third of global deaths from the drug – but now there is the added problem of krokodil. Mr Ivanov recalled a recent visit to a drug-treatment centre in Western Siberia. "They told me that two years ago almost all their drug users used heroin," said the drugs tsar. "Now, more than half of them are on desomorphine."

He estimates that overall, around 5 per cent of Russian drug users are on krokodil and other home-made drugs, which works out at about 100,000 people. It's a huge, hidden epidemic – worse in the really isolated parts of Russia where supplies of heroin are patchy – but palpable even in cities such as Tver.

It has a population of half a million, and is a couple of hours by train from Moscow, en route to St Petersburg. Its city centre, sat on the River Volga, is lined with pretty, Tsarist-era buildings, but the suburbs are miserable. People sit on cracked wooden benches in a weed-infested "park", gulping cans of Jaguar, an alcoholic energy drink. In the background, there are rows of crumbling apartment blocks. The shops and restaurants of Moscow are a world away; for a treat, people take the bus to the McDonald's by the train station.

In the city's main drug treatment centre, Artyom Yegorov talks of the devastation that krokodil is causing. "Desomorphine causes the strongest levels of addiction, and is the hardest to cure," says the young doctor, sitting in a treatment room in the scruffy clinic, below a picture of Hugh Laurie as Dr House.

"With heroin withdrawal, the main symptoms last for five to 10 days. After that there is still a big danger of relapse but the physical pain will be gone. With krokodil, the pain can last up to a month, and it's unbearable. They have to be injected with extremely strong tranquilisers just to keep them from passing out from the pain."

Dr Yegorov says krokodil users are instantly identifiable because of their smell. "It's that smell of iodine that infuses all their clothes," he says. "There's no way to wash it out, all you can do is burn the clothes. Any flat that has been used as a krokodil cooking house is best forgotten about as a place to live. You'll never get that smell out of the flat."

Addicts in Tver say they never have any problems buying the key ingredient for krokodil – codeine pills, which are sold without prescription. "Once I was trying to buy four packs, and the woman told me they could only sell two to any one person," recalls one, with a laugh. "So I bought two packs, then came back five minutes later and bought another two. Other than that, they never refuse to sell it to us, even though they know what we're going to do with it." The solution, to many, is obvious: ban the sale of codeine tablets, or at least make them prescription-only. But despite the authorities being aware of the problem for well over a year, nothing has been done.

President Dmitry Medvedev has called for websites which explain how to make krokodil to be closed down, but he has not ordered the banning of the pills. Last month, a spokesman for the ministry of health said that there were plans to make codeine-based tablets available only on prescription, but that it was impossible to introduce the measure quickly. Opponents claim lobbying by pharmaceutical companies has caused the inaction.

"A year ago we said that we need to introduce prescriptions," says Mr Ivanov. "These tablets don't cost much but the profit margins are high. Some pharmacies make up to 25 per cent of their profits from the sale of these tablets. It's not in the interests of pharmaceutical companies or pharmacies themselves to stop this, so the government needs to use its power to regulate their sale."

In addition to krokodil, there are reports of drug users injecting other artificial mixes, and the latest street drug is tropicamide. Used as eye drops by ophthalmologists to dilate the pupils during eye examinations, Dr Yegorov says patients have no trouble getting hold of capsules of it for about £2 per vial. Injected, the drug has severe psychiatric effects and brings on suicidal feelings.

"Addicts are being sold drugs by normal Russian women working in pharmacies, who know exactly what they'll be used for," said Yevgeny Roizman, an anti-drugs activist who was one of the first to talk publicly about the krokodil issue earlier this year. "Selling them to boys the same age as their own sons. Russians are killing Russians."

Zhenya, quietly spoken and wearing dark glasses, agrees to tell his story while I sit in the back of his car in a lay-by on the outskirts of Tver. He managed to kick the habit, after spending weeks at a detox clinic ,experiencing horrendous withdrawal symptoms that included seizures, a 40-degree temperature and vomiting. He lost 14 teeth after his gums rotted away, and contracted hepatitis C.

But his fate is essentially a miraculous escape – after all, he's still alive. Zhenya is from a small town outside Tver, and was a heroin addict for a decade before he moved onto krokodil a year ago. Of the ten friends he started injecting heroin with a decade ago, seven are dead.

Unlike heroin, where the hit can last for several hours, a krokodil high only lasts between 90 minutes and two hours, says Zhenya. Given that the "cooking" process takes at least half an hour, being a krokodil addict is basically a full-time job.

"I remember one day, we cooked for three days straight," says one of Zhenya's friends. "You don't sleep much when you're on krokodil, as you need to wake up every couple of hours for another hit. At the time we were cooking it at our place, and loads of people came round and pitched in. For three days we just kept on making it. By the end, we all staggered out yellow, exhausted and stinking of iodine."

In Tver, most krokodil users inject the drug only when they run out of money for heroin. As soon as they earn or steal enough, they go back to heroin. In other more isolated regions of Russia, where heroin is more expensive and people are poorer, the problem is worse. People become full-time krokodil addicts, giving them a life expectancy of less than a year.

Zhenya says every single addict he knows in his town has moved from heroin to krokodil, because it's cheaper and easier to get hold of. "You can feel how disgusting it is when you're doing it," he recalls. "You're dreaming of heroin, of something that feels clean and not like poison. But you can't afford it, so you keep doing the krokodil. Until you die."

Some of the names in this story have been changed

 

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Boozy pensioners are Britain's 'invisible addicts

Boozy pensioners are Britain's "invisible addicts", according to a new study, which urges the slashing of drinking limits for over-65s to take into account the effects of ageing.
Separate guidance on safe drinking levels for the elderly should be issued by the government as current recommended limits are based on younger adults and are too high for more mature people, the Royal College of Psychiatrists says in a report.
Recent evidence has shown that the upper safe limit for older men is 1.5 units of alcohol a day, the college said, compared to a current recommendation for men of not regularly drinking more than three to four units daily.
For women over 65, the limits should be lowered from not regularly drinking more than two to three units a day to possibly to just one unit a day, according to Dr Tony Rao, a consultant in old age psychiatry and a member of the Older People?s Substance Misuse Working Group that drew up the report.
"As we age, there are other accompanying factors such as increasing memory problems and physical health problems and less of an ability to get rid of alcohol from the blood stream," he said.
"This means that the effects of what we would currently call the safe limits is actually more damaging for older people."
The call for new drink limits for the over-65s comes as part of a series of recommendations from the college on drug and alcohol misuse among older people.
The UK is witnessing a "burgeoning" public health problem in the form of a growing alcohol and drug misuse problem among the "baby boomer" generation, according to the college.
"Not enough is being done to tackle substance misuse in our aging population ? making them society?s invisible addicts,? the study found.
It said problems included misuse of prescribed and over-the-counter medicines as well as alcohol abuse. Illegal drug use was currently uncommon among over-65s but there has been a "significant" increase in the over-40s in recent years, the report said.
A third of older people with alcohol problems develop them in later life, often as a result of changes such as retirement or bereavement, or feelings of boredom, loneliness and depression, according to the report.
Recommendations include screening by GPs for substance misuse amongst the over-65s, as part of a routine health check and a public health campaign on alcohol and drug misuse targeted at older people.
Professor Ilana Crome, professor of addiction psychiatry and chairman of the working group, said: "The traditional view is that alcohol misuse is uncommon in older people, and that the misuse of drugs is very rare.
"However, this is simply not true. A lack of awareness means that GPs and other healthcare professionals often overlook or discount the signs when someone has a problem.
"We hope this report highlights the scale of the problem, and that the multiple medical and social needs of this group of people are not ignored any longer."
Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said: "While younger excessive drinkers often make the headlines, we should remember that older people often turn to alcohol in later life as a coping mechanism and this can remain stubbornly hidden from view.
"This report calls for much greater recognition that excessive drinking in older age is both widespread and preventable, particularly if public health professionals are supported and trained to spot the signs and take appropriate action."

 

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Rogue recovery houses prey on the addicted in Surrey – and fingers are being pointed straight at the province

Nobody knows for sure just how many drug and alcohol recovery houses are operating in Surrey. Some estimates run as high as 200, but Surrey's mayor thinks the actual number is smaller. "From what I understand, there are about 130 here in our city," Mayor Dianne Watts told the Now. However many there are, the vast majority of the recovery houses in Surrey - about 90 per cent of them - are not subject to provincial regulation and inspection and that's a problem. It's a problem for the city, for police, but most of all, it's a problem for their residents, addicts trying to get clean and sober.

The situation dates from December 2001 when the government of former premier Gordon Campbell changed the rules governing recovery houses. The Liberals amended the Community Care Facility Act to create a new class of facility called supportive recovery residences that are not required to have a provincial licence to operate.

In order to qualify as a supportive recovery residence, operators are required to provide "a safe and drug-free environment" for recovering addicts, but cannot "provide most or all of the services" required of licenced houses. The changes essentially created a class of boarding house for those addicted to alcohol and drugs.

In many cases, what it created was a network of flophouses where people trying to overcome addiction are exploited by unscrupulous operators who take clients' welfare cheques, but deliver little in the way of support or supervision.

There's good money in recovery houses; 10 clients will gross the operator nearly $6,000 a month and those who exploit their clients by providing substandard accommodation and meals can realize a tidy profit.

Gary Robinson is a former Surrey city councillor, a recovery house operator and a recovering cocaine addict. He is the executive director of Realistic Success Recovery Society, which has three recovery houses in Surrey.

Robinson does it right. His houses provide clean, well-maintained residences where clients receive nutritious meals, counselling and caring support from staff and fellow residents.

Robinson has nothing but contempt and anger for operators who exploit people trying to regain control of their lives.

"I call them predators. They're preying on people at their lowest, at the lowest point in their lives."

'NO POINT' IN BEING THERE

Corey is a 22-year-old recovering crack addict who lives in one of Robinson's recovery houses. He's been wrestling with substance abuse of one kind or another since he was seven. He spent four weeks in a recovery house run by an organization that has at least five houses in Surrey.

"They got $560 a month from me and it was pretty much just a meal a day and a bed to sleep in. I wasn't put on any restrictions and I was allowed to keep my phone," Corey said.

He said within the first week of his residence there, he and the house monitor - the person in charge of the place - were on their way to a recovery meeting.

"While we were out, the monitor bought some crack. Both of us were using crack. After a while, I figured there wasn't much point being there."

Corey eventually found a place in one of Robinson's houses and 46 days in, he said the difference was like night and day.

"Here, they treat you with respect. All the guys and all the managers here show you respect, they don't look down on you."

PROVINCE BLAMED FOR PROFITEERING

Rogue recovery houses are bad news for neighbourhoods, too.

Steve Burke and Charlie Morton both live in Whalley and both have bad recovery houses in their area. They want the rules changed to outlaw the kind of exploitation they see every day. Both blame the provincial government for allowing unlicenced - and virtually uncontrolled - recovery houses to exist.

They say the province is responsible for the situation and they want Victoria to step up and put it right.

Burke and Morton said the majority of recovery houses have more residents than the rules allow, are poorly managed, and are nothing more than money-making enterprises that take advantage of people who have fallen on bad times.

The anger is evident in Morton's voice as he talks.

"We have more compassion for a dying seal on a beach than we have for human beings in our city. It's not right. I think the province is misappropriating our tax money, supposedly to help these people, and they're not doing anything."

Burke agreed. He said profit is the prime motive for most recovery house operators.

"You can't make a profit with just six people in that house. You've got to have more people there - a lot more."

CITY'S HANDS TIED: WATTS

Watts said city hall is working on a plan of action, but said the city's options are limited. City hall can only regulate zoning and land use; it has no direct control over the recovery process itself.

"This has been a problem ever since I've been on council. The province won't regulate them," the mayor said.

Watts said she's not eager to shut down recovery houses that violate city bylaws.

"But we've got to move in that direction. We're going to start shutting some of them down, but we have to have a plan to house these people. Otherwise we'll just have a lot more addicts on the street."

Calls to minister Rich Coleman were not returned.

 

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Israeli scientists have developed a method to erase memories associated with drug addiction, which could prove to be a breakthrough in preventing recidivism among rehabilitated addicts.



The Hebrew University researchers, led by Dr. Rami Yaka of the university's Institute of Drug Research, were seemingly able to erase the drug-linked memories of rats that had been deliberately administered cocaine over two weeks' time.




The researchers injected a small protein - a peptide called ZIP - directly into an area of the addicted rats' basal forebrain called the nucleus accumbens, which controls pleasure and reward and which has been demonstrated to be connected to drug addiction.

Afterward, the rats were returned to their pens to check their reactions. Rather than seeking out the place where they had been getting their "fixes" of cocaine, the rats ignored it, indicating that memories linked to their addiction had been erased.

"One of the biggest problems with drug addicts is the high rate of those who return to drug use after being rehabilitated," explained Yaka. "Memories can trigger a desire for the drug, including memories of the drug itself, the needle or the environment in which the drug was consumed.

"This research indicates the possibility of erasing these memories, in a way that will allow addicts to cancel the associations they have in their minds regarding the drug."

The research is to be included in Hebrew University's presentation at next week's Facing Tomorrow 2011 conference in Jerusalem.

The protein used has been found by other researchers over the past five years to inhibit learning processes by affecting memory. To date, however, all the memories erased have been short-term ones. This research provides evidence that the peptide can also erase memories acquired through a long-term learning process.

Based on this research, Yaka said, it may be possible to erase memories in the course of treating other problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

While the current research dealt only with memories linked to cocaine, "All drugs follow the same addictive path, just at different intensities," Yaka said. "Cocaine, heroin and even cannabis stimulate the secretion in the brain of the hormone dopamine, which is associated with pleasure, at least in the first stages of addiction. Therefore, the substance that affected the memories of addiction to cocaine should have a similar influence on addictions to other substances."

The research could provide a new treatment model for weaning people off drugs. Currently, the treatment of addicts relies primarily on administering alternative drugs, such as methadone, and psychological counseling.

Medical research has previously demonstrated the counterintuitive fact that the longer an addict remains "clean" of drugs, the more likely he is to resume taking them, because of certain chemical changes that take place in the brain.

"The treatment being examined in the current research tries to prevent the increased risk of returning to drugs by preventing some of these brain changes," Yaka said.

The scientists are still unsure if the memory erasure process is selective, affecting only memories associated with drugs, or if other memories are erased as well.

"Tests we've done show that the place [in the brain] where the substance was injected is connected solely to memories of pleasure and reward, and not to other memories," Yaka said. "We also found that after the injection of the substance, the rats' ability to accumulate new memories was not affected."

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