poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
Silent killer: The opioid addiction crisis that has crept up on regional Australia
Behind closed doors in a big country town, a young woman cooks up a legal painkiller to produce a potentially lethal high.
"Some people wake up and have breakfast. I wake up and have a shot," she says.
"That's my breakfast."
Fentanyl is a high-strength opioid, prescribed by doctors and sold as slow-release patches to relieve the constant pain of cancer patients.
But used like this, it can kill.
The practice is dubbed "Russian roulette" because users cannot predict how much fentanyl they're drawing into the syringe.
That means the solution can end up being highly potent and even deadly.
"People overdose all the time," the woman says.
She knows, because she was one of them.
Medics revived her and now she's speaking out anonymously to try to help save lives, including her own.
"You never hear of, 'such and such died of fentanyl' on the news," she says.
"But people die from it all the time, and young people die from it.
Continued -
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-...rganic&WT.tsrc=Facebook_Organic&sf111125583=1
Behind closed doors in a big country town, a young woman cooks up a legal painkiller to produce a potentially lethal high.
"Some people wake up and have breakfast. I wake up and have a shot," she says.
"That's my breakfast."
Fentanyl is a high-strength opioid, prescribed by doctors and sold as slow-release patches to relieve the constant pain of cancer patients.
But used like this, it can kill.
The practice is dubbed "Russian roulette" because users cannot predict how much fentanyl they're drawing into the syringe.
That means the solution can end up being highly potent and even deadly.
"People overdose all the time," the woman says.
She knows, because she was one of them.
Medics revived her and now she's speaking out anonymously to try to help save lives, including her own.
"You never hear of, 'such and such died of fentanyl' on the news," she says.
"But people die from it all the time, and young people die from it.
Continued -
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-...rganic&WT.tsrc=Facebook_Organic&sf111125583=1
