InvisibleEye
Bluelighter
A long article about the daily life of a handful of crocodile users on opendemocracy.net.
Excerpt from the author's preface:
«On 28 July, ‘Crocodile’, my reportage on life inside a drug den in provincial Russia, was published in the Russian magazine, Russky reporter. Three days later, Roskomdadzor, the Russian media regulator issued an official warning against the publisher for so-called promotion of narcotics, and demanded that my article be pulled from the magazine’s website. The warning mentioned the fact that the piece contained information about how to prepare ‘crocodile’, i.e. desomorphine, a hard drug produced using everyday medicines and now increasingly popular within Russia.
All I can say is the following: if these same officials had undertaken some basic research, they would understand that preparing ‘crocodile’ is, in fact, a very complicated process, and one that cannot be mastered from a few short sentences. Even after long periods of addiction, not every drug user is able to prepare it (indeed, those who can’t are expected to buy all the ingredients and share the dose out among those present in the kitchen). I included such details in my article only as background in an attempt to create an atmosphere faithful to what I saw.
On 1 July, a new law came into force in our country that banned the over-the-counter sale of medicines containing codeine. I note that the Russian media dutifully reported the full list of medicines that can be used to make narcotics, and suggest that such vocalisation might also be called promotion or propaganda of drugs.
Not a single law enforcement officer has bothered to get in touch with me about my work. Not a single officer is, it seems, interested enough to ask about the pharmacists who are selling prescription medicines without a prescription. The same officials demanded that my publishers simply pull the article, having already threatened them with closure. No doubt, they did not bother enough to review readers’ comments; if they did, they might have read a view that ‘no other article provokes such feelings of revulsion towards drugs’.[...]»
Excerpt from the article itself:
«In the morning we go out buying. Witch is wearing jeans, a jacket and rubber flip-flops. I find myself carrying a large plastic bag containing petrol, soda, hydrochloric acid, matches, iodine, and a nylon stocking. Witch looks around cautiously. In Yekaterinburg, as nowadays everywhere else in Russia, there is a ban on the sale of medicines containing codeine, but all the local drug addicts know pharmacies where they can buy unpackaged tablets under the counter by paying over the odds. The pharmacists keep the packaging so that crocodile addicts don’t scatter it around the city. There are addicts who hang around these pharmacies ready to relieve anybody weaker than themselves of their purchases.
We go upstairs and cautiously open the door. We look in. No customers. We enter. Behind the counter, separated from us by a glass screen, is a plump, rosy-cheeked woman in a white coat. She looks Witch over quickly and decides she is okay, but lingers on me. I put the bag on the counter.
‘Sedalgin,’ Witch says quietly. ‘Ten packs. And iodine. Syringes. And Tropicamide, two packs.’
‘One thousand two hundred and seventy,’ the pharmacist says, also quietly, laying out the pills, iodine and syringes on the counter.
I try persistently to catch her eye, but she seems to be making a point of avoiding eye contact.»
Full article here:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/marina-akhmedova/snap-goes-crocodile
Excerpt from the author's preface:
«On 28 July, ‘Crocodile’, my reportage on life inside a drug den in provincial Russia, was published in the Russian magazine, Russky reporter. Three days later, Roskomdadzor, the Russian media regulator issued an official warning against the publisher for so-called promotion of narcotics, and demanded that my article be pulled from the magazine’s website. The warning mentioned the fact that the piece contained information about how to prepare ‘crocodile’, i.e. desomorphine, a hard drug produced using everyday medicines and now increasingly popular within Russia.
All I can say is the following: if these same officials had undertaken some basic research, they would understand that preparing ‘crocodile’ is, in fact, a very complicated process, and one that cannot be mastered from a few short sentences. Even after long periods of addiction, not every drug user is able to prepare it (indeed, those who can’t are expected to buy all the ingredients and share the dose out among those present in the kitchen). I included such details in my article only as background in an attempt to create an atmosphere faithful to what I saw.
On 1 July, a new law came into force in our country that banned the over-the-counter sale of medicines containing codeine. I note that the Russian media dutifully reported the full list of medicines that can be used to make narcotics, and suggest that such vocalisation might also be called promotion or propaganda of drugs.
Not a single law enforcement officer has bothered to get in touch with me about my work. Not a single officer is, it seems, interested enough to ask about the pharmacists who are selling prescription medicines without a prescription. The same officials demanded that my publishers simply pull the article, having already threatened them with closure. No doubt, they did not bother enough to review readers’ comments; if they did, they might have read a view that ‘no other article provokes such feelings of revulsion towards drugs’.[...]»
Excerpt from the article itself:
«In the morning we go out buying. Witch is wearing jeans, a jacket and rubber flip-flops. I find myself carrying a large plastic bag containing petrol, soda, hydrochloric acid, matches, iodine, and a nylon stocking. Witch looks around cautiously. In Yekaterinburg, as nowadays everywhere else in Russia, there is a ban on the sale of medicines containing codeine, but all the local drug addicts know pharmacies where they can buy unpackaged tablets under the counter by paying over the odds. The pharmacists keep the packaging so that crocodile addicts don’t scatter it around the city. There are addicts who hang around these pharmacies ready to relieve anybody weaker than themselves of their purchases.
We go upstairs and cautiously open the door. We look in. No customers. We enter. Behind the counter, separated from us by a glass screen, is a plump, rosy-cheeked woman in a white coat. She looks Witch over quickly and decides she is okay, but lingers on me. I put the bag on the counter.
‘Sedalgin,’ Witch says quietly. ‘Ten packs. And iodine. Syringes. And Tropicamide, two packs.’
‘One thousand two hundred and seventy,’ the pharmacist says, also quietly, laying out the pills, iodine and syringes on the counter.
I try persistently to catch her eye, but she seems to be making a point of avoiding eye contact.»
Full article here:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/marina-akhmedova/snap-goes-crocodile
