Imelda Robles/ Reform Agency
Tuesday, February 07, 2023 | 08:21
Monterrey Mexico.- Marcela is 35 years old and last January she ended up in a hospital in Escobedo on the verge of a heart attack, after inhaling fentanyl for five days.
“With five days I inhaled two grains a day. Two grains, we are talking about the size of a grain of sugar, with two ground grains,” she narrated by phone from the Lenvi AC rehabilitation clinic, located in Apodaca, where she is hospitalized.
“On the fifth day it was when I inhaled it and whoosh! It gave me something else, it triggered my head.”
She had been consuming crystal for a year and was invited to try this new drug. Fearing reprisals, she asks to change her name and omit the point of sale where she bought the grams of fentanyl.
Currently in this rehabilitation center in the Lomas del Pedregal neighborhood there are three women hospitalized for fentanyl use.
“They told my dad: ‘his daughter is already on the verge of a heart attack’, he shares. “They told me at the hospital: ‘are you taking crystal?’, and I say yes. And then they tell me: ‘did you combine it with another stronger substance?’ And I told them yes, with the fentanyl.”
“It’s practically not me anymore, it’s a zombie walking around, I have a lot of anger, a lot of anger. I want to get high all the time. You go crazy, a prostitute.”
Her family convinced her to enter this center. Marcela said she knew another woman who also used fentanyl and she committed suicide last January because she hallucinated that her father asked her to hang herself.
“When they offer them, don’t do it because they are going to lose everything or they can even go into respiratory arrest, because the body can’t take so much,” he stressed. “That drug is deadly and if you overdo it you go straight to the grave.”
RED FIGURES
In 2021, more than 107,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses. A daily average of 293 people.
It is a figure never recorded and attributed to extremely dangerous substances such as fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, for its acronym in English).
It has become one of the main causes of death in the neighboring country, similar to the number of people who die from diabetes or Alzheimer’s.
In Mexico, fentanyl use is already alarming in northern border cities like Tijuana and Mexicali.
US media have pointed out that the Mexican government’s figures for deaths resulting from opioid overdoses are imprecise, since they register a minimal amount compared to the epidemic that the United States is facing due to fentanyl.
SITUATION IN NL
The director of State Mental Health and Addictions, Juan José Roque Segovia, reported that last year in Nuevo León they detected 11 people who said they had used fentanyl, but only in three cases was this opioid their hit drug, that is, for which they arrived at a rehabilitation center.
And in 2021, he added, they registered 13 people, of whom in two cases the opioid was the hit drug.
The official said that in previous years they have not detected consumers.
These data are provided by the Addiction Epidemiological Surveillance System based on information from state-regulated rehabilitation centers.
However, Juanita Sosa, director of the Hospitalization Unit for Addictions of the Youth Integration Centers (CIJ) in Nuevo León, explains that the situation with fentanyl is very different and probably users are not reaching rehabilitation centers, but to emergency medical units as it is such a powerful and deadly drug.
“When it comes to fentanyl, what has to be achieved is that the person does not die, because they will stop breathing, their heart will stop beating,” says Sosa.
“These are very different situations, which is probably why fentanyl users, if there is already a consumption situation in the City, are not arriving at a rehab center like this, but probably in emergency rooms.”
An alert fentanyl user can go into respiratory arrest within minutes of taking the drug.
Roque Segovia adds that he can also convulse, break blood vessels or have brain hemorrhages.
A maximum period of three months is estimated for a substance addict to reach an emergency unit, and many will be left with serious sequelae.
A GREAT RISK
Although the current figures do not reflect a crisis due to the use of fentanyl in Nuevo León, specialists and authorities admit that there is a great risk that the panorama will change and the intake of this drug will skyrocket, as has happened with other substances that first spread through USA.
“The risk that this migratory movement will suddenly cause people who already bring these drugs to begin to arrive and begin to interact with the people who distribute the drugs, is indeed a risk,” stressed the director of State Mental Health and Addictions. .
In Nuevo León there have already been important seizures of fentanyl. Last November, the Attorney General’s Office seized 29,000 fentanyl pills in a house in the Santa Fe neighborhood, in Monterrey.
The CDC has warned that fentanyl is often mixed with other types of drugs, such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines, and in many cases the person does not even know they are taking it.
Roque Segovia pointed out that 40 percent of drug users in the state ingest two or more illegal substances, so it would be likely that the mixture with fentanyl would also occur in Nuevo León.
To know
– The substance is mixed with other drugs, since a very small amount of fentanyl causes a “high” (high with a more stimulating sensation) at a cheaper price.
– The fentanyl that is consumed illegally and is associated with overdoses is the one that is manufactured in clandestine laboratories and sold in powder form, poured in drops on blotting paper, in containers of eye drops, nasal sprays or in pills.
– It works by binding to receptors in the brain that control pain and emotions, in such a way that the brain adapts to the drug and it is very difficult to feel pleasure in any other way than with said substance.
– There is the pharmaceutical fentanyl that is used for medicinal purposes to help people with intense pain or in advanced stages of cancer.
Source: US National Institute on Drug Abuse.
