Tranq: The Zombie Drug That’s Ravaging The United States
Sleep-cut, zombie drug, super bad news.
In 1962, Xylazine was discovered as an anti-hypertensive agent by Farbenfabriken Bayer in Leverkusen, Germany. It became a drug that was used for sedation and anesthesia in animals and non-human mammals such as horses and cattle.
It wasn’t until 1979 that the first case of recreational use of Xylazine would be reported. It was a 34-year-old man who had self medicated for insomnia and injected himself with 1g of Xylazine. The most common route for Xylazine use is intravenous which is also the most common for people who abuse heroin.
Xylazine has become a popular drug of abuse in the United States since the year 2000. Since its inception as a street drug, it has garnered a plethora of street names: zombie drug, speed-cut, tranq dope and ‘tranq’ being the most common.
In Puerto Rico, it goes by the name anestesia de caballo which translates to “horse anesthetic”.
According to statistics, the proportion of Xylazine found in heroin and fentanyl deaths from 2010 through 2019 in the city of Philadelphia rose from 3% to a staggering 28%.
“It’s really cheap. Xylazine is an unscheduled veterinary drug. It’s very easy to obtain and it’s not illegal.”
— Dr. Joseph D’Orazio, Temple University
The worst part of this opioid invasion into the drug world is the effects that Tranq has on users. Reports show that drugs laced with Xylazine cause skin sores, lesions, and infections at the injection sites. More severe cases result in skin necrosis which is essentially the death of body tissue.
Doctors and physicians fear the rate of limb amputations due to abuse of Xylazine will skyrocket in the following months.
