The Fentanyl Thread

Seems like this is becoming enough of a problem to warrant its own thread

I'm glad my drug days are mostly in the rearview mirror - they're putting this shit in everything now

including network TV! I saw a scene from a cop drama where someone opened a gym bag and it had a baggie of fentanyl powder and a cop screamed NOBODY MOVE IF THAT BAG IS PUNCTURED WE ALL DIE like it was full of super anthrax

Did the baggie have a label on it marked "fentanyl"? bcz otherwise it could have been corn starch.

the way that its been imbued with near-supernatural powers of evil & harm in the American cultural consciousness (like crack & cocaine in the 90s) always seems imho like a paradoxical way of ignoring the actual IRL issue by simply Othering the substance itself, treating it like its some kind of alien demon powder that is mostly being used by supervillains trying to kill cops & trick or treaters. urban-mythologizing it as a way of making it harder to imagine the actual issues that it may be causing in your IRL community.

one of my best friends killed himself this way. it was nearly a decade ago. it was the first time I'd ever heard of it. when I looked it up all I could find were people on drug forums going "DO NOT TAKE THIS, it won't get you high and it is very easy to overdose on"

An old buddy/roommate OD'd and died in October - and he was no novice when it came to the drugs. And from what I understand, he was not injecting but was smoking on foil

i had a discussion with a friend at the start of 2022 about how glad we were it was so rare to hear about it here. since then i have had 2 friends die from it, one just this week (snorted it believing it was ketamine apparently). the one earlier this year was a very old and dear friend. i wasn't close to their partner but for some reason they reached out to me and wanted to talk. they went into forensic detail about what happened and how she had died in his arms. the detail was horrific and still haunts me.

mine was using patches. I'd never seen anything like it. I'm still pretty spooked by that day - he hadn't shown up for work and wasn't answering his phone. eventually another friend and I went to the apartment where his car was still parked. we called him again and you could hear his phone ringing from inside the room. I remember being like "ah, that's weird...wonder what's going on...is he still sleeping? wait a second OH FUCK"

God, I’m so sorry to hear about your lost friends. There’s something horrifying happening in the states and as usual nobody gives a shit when it’s ordinary drug users being killed, only if there could possibly be a threat to the blameless and saintly police.

I'm sorry, all.

ya unfortunately the image of one of my best friends (whom I've known since the age of 12) lying there motionless with no shirt on covered in puke and these weird patches while my other friend screams "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" over and over is something that's never quite left me. fuck the cops who trivialize this shit

I don't think police are trivializing it - they're often the first line EMTs with this stuff, especially in big cities, with the narcan sprays

There’s something horrifying happening in the states

Fentanyl OD's have grown so common that they are a major factor in the drop in USA life expectancy over the past several years. This fact alone drives home how bad it's become.

there are adverts all around glasgow telling people how they can get naloxone / narcan and advising those in high risk groups and friends to carry it at all times. the campaign has saved a lot of heroin users lives. the problem is a lot of people who have no inkling they are at risk from an opioid overdose are dying.

xp I guess it's maybe not the right word for it but all those bullshit stories about how one of them **almost died** because they touched the powder really do upset me. for one because it would be nice to be able to trust authority on this, for two it's scaring people who really do need it

i live in the rust belt and this part of winter is always deadly bc so many people are shut indoors sitting at home using alone

I've heard anecdotally that fentanyl became super-attractive to older junkies for whom heroin wasn't doing much anymore - they could actually get high again like they hadn't been in years, due to drug tolerance. But with heroin, you might use it twice a day whereas fentanyl doesn't last as long so you're maybe doing it four or five times a day to avoid withdrawals

This is the most recent one, of many, that pisses me the fuck off about how cops are handling this. Yes, there is a real threat that needs to be addressed, but this bullshit propaganda serves absolutely zero purpose. Terrible acting in the video.

https://nypost.com/2022/12/14/florida-cop-treated-for-overdose-after-exposure-to-fentanyl/

The officers believe Bannick, who was wearing gloves when handling the narcotics, may have been exposed due to the wind blowing the drugs into her system.

I've not been able to suss out whether people seek this drug out on purpose or whether it's just getting added into other things to cut the purity/increase the potency/reduce the cost. My own experience with this drug has been before surgeries only, and I can tell you that going out on this is some sweet oblivion that lasts about exactly 45 seconds tops.

ie: it's not getting high, it's immediately going unconscious.

I think for my friend it was. basically what happened is there was this guy who was getting prescribed insane amounts of painkillers that he didn't need so he was selling them to make his child support payments. eventually he was getting fent patches and just sold 'em for 20 bucks. that's what pisses me off the most about this, it was just so totally avoidable

frogbs.. you say: one of my best friends killed himself this way

Does that imply it was maybe intentional? or just a bad accident

Either way, what an awful experience for you and your friend that discovered them... that's like PTSD shit

whether people seek this drug out on purpose

I think it's both. The buddy of mine that died in October knew exactly what he was dealing with. The group of friends doing 'coke' in Denver (part of the newish WaPo story) likely did not

I ask myself that a lot. This guy had a lot of knowledge about drugs. The idea that it was an "accidental overdose" doesn't sit right with me. He had patches all over his body. And, as we would find out in the following weeks, the guy was juggling a lot of bullshit about his future plans and generally seemed desperate. It turned out he owed *everyone* money. He stole from his job and got fired (we all defended him, but in retrospect he almost certainly did it). He was telling everyone that he was going into the military but apparently his recruiter said he didn't pass the physical. It was a really strange situation. I was with him that very night, we had a group playing cards and then watching stuff on YouTube after...I think Key and Peele? The only thing 'off' about him was earlier in the day he was texting a ton of people and then just disappeared for a while. Obviously we know why now!!

well, there's definitely a self-destructive element to dope.. even if it's not a straight-up death wish

and yeah it definitely fucked up my other friend. he was a guy who'd done two deployments and apparently had really seen some shit. when he got back he was really not in a good spot but he slowly worked his way back. this set him all the way back and then some. the cops made him do a secret recorded phone call with me (another fun fact! the guy who sold him the fentanyl was my brother! I didn't rat him out over the phone though because I had no idea!). about 30 minutes I got another call from him saying "you or someone else needs to get here now". he was gonna shoot himself. I couldn't make it in time but luckily someone else did. he spent a few weeks in the VA and wound up slowly getting okay again. sheesh, sorry to vent about all this. In retrospect I can't believe how crazy this all was. I guess I was fortunate because I had my first kid right after so I really did feel like it was a new beginning after all that.

that's some gnarly shit.. totally okay to vent

And I think American veterans (youngish dudes) are especially vulnerable to this kind of 'painkiller'

ooh here's another wild thing I just remembered: watching all your group's made-up slang for various drugs show up in the police report. if it all wasn't so tragic it would've been pretty amusing watching them try to figure out what term meant what. we didn't really know either. for me everything was just weed.

Wow, so sorry about lost friends. I've only lost one friend to an OD in recent years, and I never heard the report of what it was exactly (tho fentanyl now accounts for the vast majority of overdose deaths in our county). I know the "cop-almost-died-by-touching-it" stories are bullshit, but the sheer toxicity of the stuff is obviously the problem with it. As a parent of teenagers it does legitimately freak me out that they could be somewhere and someone could be passing around powders or pills that actually could kill people (unlike most of the drug hysteria of earlier generations). Fortunately neither of my kids seem likely to even end up in that situation much less dive in, but NO PILLS OR POWDERS is the only real anti-drug messaging I've ever given them.

The death toll is stark. Here in our county, even just in the last 10 years — i.e. well into the opioid surge that started with Oxycontin — we've gone from less than 100 OD deaths a year to more than 500. And it goes up every year.

It's also moved from something that only white people were dying from to a toll that more closely mirrors the racial makeup of the local population. (i.e. still mostly white, but it's obviously made inroads in Black and Latino communities)

Grateful for any prayers you can send my cousin Anthony’s way. He’s a cop & decorated member of Boston PD’s Komodo Squad & yesterday an ANTIFA made eye contact with him & said “Fentanyl” pic.twitter.com/aUnsMgWOOU

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) January 31, 2023

I just heard about Xylazine, another drug (large animal tranquiler) that's hitting the streets. Saw a video shot in Philly, then googled to see it's spreading West. It seems it's being mixed with other drugs, including fentanyl.

I saw something about that as well.. aka "Tranq"

I feel like there's one of these stories nearly every week now... like nobody can even help because they're overdosing as well

4 dead in suspected fentanyl overdose at South Lake Tahoe home identified

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/4-dead-in-suspected-overdose-south-lake-tahoe-identified/103-c8980d37-c88a-4e98-a276-3cc64541a880

Just read this in The Guardian

Fentanyl is the current leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 to 45, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

I knew things were bad but I hadn't realized it was #1, even more than auto accidents... crazy

i still, to this day, don't understand why dealers want to kill people. don't they want repeat business? like, people selling coke with fentanyl in it. i wish someone could explain why this would ever be a good drug dealing move.
i mean i guess i get selling super-strong shit to hardcore users. the thing of users running to buy from someone when they hear that people are keeling over from strong shit is as old as the hills. but not everyone is a hardcore user that can take superstrong shots.

also, i remember being really surprised when i finally saw all of The Wire and how they had fentanyl in the show in..2008? that's a long time ago.

Sell hard recreational drugs at the pharmacy, regulated and taxed. Never gonna happen but there are no other solutions - we gonna destroy the cartels?

Even if we invaded Mexico I’m not betting against the Sinaloa Cartel.

don't understand why dealers want to kill people

I don't think this is the intention - but fentany ('feddy') is just so cheap to produce, it's kinda like the high fructose corn syrup of drugs.. you can add it to anything as an adulterant, but unlike baby laxative, it actually improves the high

Real heroin, cocaine - they involve agricultural products that are harvested only in a few places in the world.. fentanyl is just some synthetic shit you can order in bulk from Chinese suppliers, while the Chinese gov't happily turns a blind eye. Even if this product is really dangerous/lethal, it's just dead easy to produce in large quantities

yeah that makes sense but you still want people to come back for more! when i hear about people dropping dead after doing coke...oof.

I forgot that there was any mention of fentanyl in The Wire - is it the stuff about hot shots? The Silver Jews had that line about smoking the gel from a fentanyl patch back in 2005.

This stuff is so bleak - there was a podcast episode I listened to discussing the difficulties of treating fentanyl users because what they’re actually using might be 5 different chemicals that all have different effects and influences on withdrawal symptoms.

so many people cross-addicted now too. meth and fentanyl. which is almost impossible to treat! but yeah those toxic cocktails of junk that have god knows what in them. there is no curing something like tranq. even narcan doesn't work on it when people od. just poison added to poison added to poison.

they put in a new public bathroom where i park my car near my store and it has become THE elite place to shoot up and OD. its right next to the skatepark. high, kids! and directly across the street from the Cheech & Chong weed store. someone was just being taken away in an ambulance when i got to work the other day. i'm still glad they put in a bathroom though. people who live in their cars and homeless people use the water fountain connected to it to wash up. so many people have died since i moved here. its quieter now. it feels like the hardcore are the ones left in town. less kids. less people from outside. its still here though. all around my store.
people in town never thought they'd live down that visit from anthony bourdain. it was a little mean. he starts the show in Provincetown and he can't just walk down the street to New Bedford to talk about heroin? why'd he have to get on the highway and come here? what a meany!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVS_eikIKH8

i'll check the county police news in my hometown and there's a lot of this going on. multiple people whose names i recognize from high school who have been busted for stuff involving meth or fentanyl or the euphemistic "controlled substances". they'll show their mug shots and they look elderly, and they're in their late forties. my mom has noticed a lot of it too, she'll call me and tell me about some local ODs once in awhile. and once in awhile, in these stories, i recognize a last name and someone shows up in a mug shot and i realize it's the child of someone i went to school with, and they look thoroughly destroyed. i just can't handle it, seeing all that.

I saw a free Naloxone distribution box at a shopping plaza in my neighborhood the other day. First one of those I’ve seen. Harm reduction efforts have started to sink in here. We have one of the highest OD rates in the country, Southern Appalachia is a real ground zero. I see needles and orange caps on the street not infrequently, so I hope the Naloxone helps.

This stuff is so bleak - there was a podcast episode I listened to discussing the difficulties of treating fentanyl users because what they’re actually using might be 5 different chemicals that all have different effects and influences on withdrawal symptoms.

― JoeStork, Monday, September 23, 2024 6:24 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

huge issue in my experience, particularly in the past few years. mostly due to xylazine it seems, which also seems to do awful things to its users, like skin ulceration. one of my last patients at my old job was a guy in his thirties whose forearm looked like two-face’s bad side in the dark knight. it’s awful

Philly is a well-known epicenter of this stuff, so well-known that I have grown completely used to people nodding out in public places, shooting up in public places, etc.

I have lost 20 people to opioids over the past 25 years, about ten of them it was clearly fent-adulterated stuff.

While test strips, narcan, and etc becoming normalized is great, a sane drug policy would be better. In the meantime, people keep dying.

some good recent news anyway.

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/18/nx-s1-5107417/overdose-fatal-fentanyl-death-opioid

i kept hoping there would be some natural/national shunning of these drugs at some point. i feel like that's what happened to crack years ago. it just became a big ewww, no, i'm not doing that, it's gross and i will become a zombie. not cool. not a good idea.

also, just attrition.

i feel like the 2008 crisis created so much uncertainty/depression/panic/bleakness and that rippled for years and years through families and communities and it was during a perfect storm of abundant pills/drugs and hopefully it has started to slow down. but who knows. maybe super-duper triple-F will show up any day now. a wonder pill made of meth and fentanyl that cures all ills and that costs five cents a pill.

the Russian Routlette aspect of this is what's terrifying to me, I've been to parties where I've done random things with random people and while I've always had the presence of mind to be like "ehh how bout I do just a little" now just a little can kill you

Yeah I was gonna say. Increased stigma/"shunning" of fent ain't gonna help the kid with a benzo addiction who buys pressed pills and doesn't test them bc "I only buy from people I trust."

it has to help that weed is practically as strong as heroin now! people can just do that. buy a big chunk of shatter and nod out for a month.

most of the reason why i stopped buying edibles. i was incapacitated from 8 pm until i finally fell asleep.

it has to help that weed is practically as strong as heroin now!

I know you’re not serious but this is still a crazy thing to say.

well you know what i mean. i'd rather people were smoking tons of strong weed then doing heroin. shatter can be, like, 90% thc.

i'd rather people were smoking tons of strong weed instead of drinking a ton for that matter.

We're seeing a plateauing of OD deaths here, which are still at historically high levels but at least not going up for the moment. Hopefully it's a longer-term trend.

The thing with opioids and fentanyl in particular that is obviously so bad is the lethality. The addiction is a serious problem, for sure, which will destroy someone's life over time. But the reason there's an urgency is that unlike even crack or meth, it's so easy to just outright die on any given day. Getting a handle on deaths via harm reduction is a big step. It will still leave the broader addiction problem to deal with, but as long as people are alive there are opportunities to deal with it.

i kept hoping there would be some natural/national shunning of these drugs at some point. i feel like that's what happened to crack years ago. it just became a big ewww, no, i'm not doing that, it's gross and i will become a zombie. not cool. not a good idea.

oh, shit, crack came back around here pretty recently. way i figure it, people are just desperate for anything that's not laced with fent. turns out the sacklers were so good at being pushers they took over the whole game, everything comes back to their product these days.

i mean it can't be all bad, it's kept me off street molly. the only way to get clean stuff is to go through the dark web. i don't fuck with the dark web or cryptocurrency. i mean there are a lot of fucked up, desperate, marginalized people, and it's an easy way to feel good. it's something to put one's hope in, when there isn't jack shit else to hope for.

and i mean maybe the russian roulette aspect of it is deliberate. i've reached a point where i'm not gonna kill myself, but i still got strong urges for what gets called "traumatophilia", to put myself in a situation where really bad shit could happen to me. i'm not gonna deliberately kill myself, but i don't mind dying. it's not about "having a good time" for me, it's not ever been about "having a good time", it's about filling some desperate need, some desperate lack. the market has apparently decided fent is the best product for us.

The problem tends to be that there is a substantial group of ppl who think if you’re trying coke or pills in the first place you are crazy and deserve to die

Yeah I was gonna say. Increased stigma/"shunning" of fent ain't gonna help the kid with a benzo addiction who buys pressed pills and doesn't test them bc "I only buy from people I trust."

― "Lunch" is self-explanatory (bernard snowy)

there's this billboard in my neighborhood that says "Fentanyl is sneaky." and shows two pills, one which, the caption says, contains fent and one which doesn't. When I saw that, I asked my ex-girlfriend, "Damn, where'd they find a pill that doesn't contain fent?"

The problem tends to be that there is a substantial group of ppl who think if you’re trying coke or pills in the first place you are crazy and deserve to die

― Heez

god, my favorite thing was back pre-covid when i was at a work meeting with the FBI and one of them was talking about the opioid crisis. they were really confused by it, because - i'm paraphrasing here - they genuinely thought the best way to deal with any drug crisis was to shoot black people, and with the opioid crisis, the people getting addicted were, like, their moms

every day, more and more people get labelled as "crazy people who deserve to die", and fewer and fewer people have the privilege to label us like that. i don't see that trend reversing anytime soon.

a friend of mine showed me the a la carte drug service in brooklyn that their boyfriend orders from on their phone which has EVERY drug you could ever want and EVERYTHING is tested and of the highest quality and all of it is delivered to your door and all i could think was DAMN it must be nice to be rich. it made me want to buy drugs that i don't even do.

i was talking to my dad about how people that are OD'ing are not actually attempting to do fentanyl, just coke or a pill, and his response was "why does anybody need to do drugs in the first place." i realized at that time how sheltered he truly was

I’m sorry to hear that, table.

thanks Raymond.

people definitely still smoke rock yall, it’s all over Philly just like fent

oh for sure but in the 80s it was a whole other level. it was madness. new york got seriously scary and bleak. when i moved to philly in 1988 it was like a nasty hangover after a really long scary party. it was not fun in that city. things got better though. or people just died. or ended up in jail. it never went away though.

also meth kinda took over in the 21st century in a lot of places. more bang for your buck. like 9% beer and 90% thc dabs.

Nitazenes: I'd heard about these drugs awhile ago, looks like they starting to circulate out on the streets

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/25/opioid-crisis-nitazenes-fentanyl

I read something about the adderall shortage coming back and it occurred to me I could get pills to try self-medicating ADHD on the darknet… then it occurred to me what a horrible horrible idea that is.

also meth kinda took over in the 21st century in a lot of places. more bang for your buck. like 9% beer and 90% thc dabs.

My first two roommates immediately after high school ended up working at a pool hall that was tweaker central.

Since the beginning of the social media age it’s been interesting to see how many pop up as total normies with no obvious signs they once drove to Chicago on a whim after being up for a week and hallucinated they were being followed the entire way there.

Meth didn’t manage to kill anyone in that circle (lots of dentures though), a generation later with opiates and benzos as primary options they’d be dropping flies.

I read something about the adderall shortage coming back and it occurred to me I could get pills to try self-medicating ADHD on the darknet… then it occurred to me what a horrible horrible idea that is.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

i stockpile adderall. i absolutely do. i also underdose on adderall because i'm afraid of getting addicted after what i went through with benzos. i was lucky and got an ADHD diagnosis really easily six or so years ago, without even trying really. i've switched to vyvanse, like a lot of people have now that it's out of patent.

my ex-girlfriend has a long history with meth addiction. she's got street chemistry skills that impress me, at least. last year when she relapsed, it wasn't on street meth - she was able to figure out how to process her ADHD meds to get an amphetamine high off them. i'm impressed that she can still get ADHD meds. they usually don't want to give that stuff to people who got a history with meth addiction, and most of those people probably _don't_ got the street chemistry skills to abuse them the way my ex-GF does. she says there are some drugs she can't tamper with to get high off. i trusted her on that until she figured out how to tamper with one of the drugs she swore she couldn't tamper with to get high. she legit can't stand adderall, fortunately. i haven't told her i switched to vyvanse and i won't tell her.

honestly when it comes to relapse, i'm most relieved at the path she took. one of the reasons i avoid the dark web is because of her. she could at any time get on the dark web and order a bunch of meth, enough to kill herself, and kill herself. she wants to do that a lot. she could do that. so for me, not using the dark web or crypto is a way of supporting her in not doing that. she also is often in situations where there's ready availability of street drugs. it's hard for her, honestly, to be surrounded by the signs of it, the paraphenalia, the junkies, and knowing that's an _option_ for her, it's something she _could_ do. she says that if she got stuff on the street, it wouldn't be meth, it would be fent. and again, she'd take enough fent to kill herself. it'd be really fucking easy for her to do that. she does harm reduction as much as she can, but if she wants to work, it's something she has to deal with. which in turn makes it hard for her to keep a job. she's starting a new job this week, and it's a good job, and it's in a rough neighborhood, meaning there's lots of evidence of drugs, lots of access to drugs, and i'm hopeful, i'm hopeful that she can get over, even though in the past she hasn't been able to keep jobs.

that's part of being marginalized, it's not just about having to go through shit a lot of people don't, it's that when it comes to dealing with those problems, certain solutions are more accessible than others. if she was able to live out in some suburb somewhere, she'd be at less risk than she is where she is. that's not really viable for her right now.

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for me personally, the idea of "addiction" is fraught for me. i was addicted to benzos, medically prescribed benzos, back in the mid '00s, cold turkeyed them, went through withdrawal syndrome. it sucked.

versus "dependence". like, i'm dependent on estrogen. when i used to do my estradiol cypionate shot, i would legit feel high, like i'd feel some white light/white heat shit. i did a stable dose every week that i got through a compounding pharmacy and every week i'd feel like i'd shoot myself up and when i did that i'd feel like everything was right with the world, that i loved everyone, that i was on top of the world, and at the same time i'd feel calm and relaxed and this sense of profound peace. i wouldn't feel that high all week, but i'd feel good all week. about a week later i'd kind of... i mean the day before it was like "thank god i'm doing my shot tomorrow".

and i compare that to how i felt on benzos, which was dead, which was dead and lethargic and like a zombie, but it made the terror more tolerable. i was still terrified and they kept giving me more, and i was still terrified. the benzos didn't fix anything. i hate benzos. i think they're awful. the times i've had to take opioids, i've hated them the same way. i underdose on them. i'd rather hurt than feel that loss of control that comes with opioids. i feel like i can't _do_ anything. i felt that way with benzos too.

it's tough to mediate. i have a hard time trusting meds that i feel like have addictive potential, even if they do help me. i underdose on stuff where really it's just a problem of dependence. plus the problem is that i'm a writer. writing is something i _need_ to do, but it only benefits me emotionally, psychologically. it doesn't pay the bills. it doesn't help me with my laundry. it just gives me a sense of fulfillment that nothing else does, that i can't get from my job or doing my laundry. in a way i'm dependent on it. i hate doing it and i feel like i need to do it and if i don't do it i get all fucked up in the head. without putting things down into word, it's hard to make meaning out of my life, out of the world i live in. and that, of course...

philip k. dick, in the mid '60s, meth was how he wrote. he'd spend a couple months planning out a book, what it would look like, and then he'd go on a meth jag and write a book in about six weeks. that fucked him up pretty bad. i feel like he could possibly have been a healthier, more functional human being if he could've taken adderall instead. douglas adams, i read about what people had to go through to get him to write. they'd have to lock him in a room for a weekend and take away all other distractions. yeah that's what it takes to get me to do shit sometimes too. i can't _know_ for instance but god i feel like that dude would've loved adderall. it's just like... certain things require an _exceptional_ amount of internal discipline, motivation, focus. for people who have ADHD, it is so fucking hard to Do The Thing.

-

i hate being dependent on ADHD meds but i mean ultimately the world does require that i Do The Thing reliably and regularly. just like my body requires estrogen.

i don't know how much estrogen i _need_. i stopped being able to get estradiol cypioniate, even through compounding pharmacies. there are shortages of injectable estradiol, like there are shortages of adderall and ADHD meds. a lot of people were diagnosed with ADHD over the first COVID years. i mean to me, it's a lot harder for me to Do The Thing when I'm working from home than when I'm in the office. so that makes sense to me. and i mean, also, late capitalism, supply shortages, supply chain failures. it's a normal part of life, the shit that they said only happened under communism is a normal part of life here and now. pfizer can do what it wants, it has absolute authority over what to make and when, and what i have access to is dependent on what they decide to make and how much they decide to make.

so of course trans people stockpile hormones. of fucking course we do. we've been stockpiling for years. i'm shooting up expired valerate and i figure it's probably fine. they have to put expiration dates on drugs. it doesn't necessarily have any correlation to any decrease in potency. my ex-girlfriend did the math on the equivalent and it's probably fine. i feel like shit since i switched, but maybe that's all in my head, you know?

i could get cypionate, of course. fuck, i could get any of the esters. i could get cypionate or undecyclate or benzoate, esters DIY transfems swear are better than even cypionate, esters you can't get prescribed in the US. it'd be pretty easy. they're not as safe as white-market stuff, though, and i'd have to fuck with crypto. and i don't fuck with crypto. and it's not something we talk about. the guardian, a couple months ago, they said they wanted to talk to people who were doing DIY, and the word went out in trans communities, don't fucking talk to the Guardian, they are not your friends. it's a risk me even saying this stuff here now, some asshole could find it and build some whole bullshit narrative about the way that awful transgender ideology is corrupting our youth, that people are using E like they use fent. we're not, but you know, transphobes are always willing to tell bald-faced lies, so certainly they're willing to take anything i say out of context.

i guess if i'm saying anything it's that if you get into a situation where you can't access what you need safely and legally, it's easy to get into some difficult situations. you can't get E legally, you get it from the same sources people get fent. you can't get GRS legally, you get back-alley GRS in tijuana. that's something trans women used to do in the '80s and '90s, and when the guy doing it killed someone, a very reputable and respected article was written that made us look like the most fucked up awful sickos in the world.

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so yeah self-medicating on the darknet is a horrible idea. but it happens. and in the us, it's mostly tolerated because there are a lot of people who can't afford their meds and get bootleg meds from canada. and those people, white cishet senior citizens, are considered valuable and important, and that's how we're able to get access to the things we can get access to. for good or for ill. the alternatives aren't always great. stockpiling meds and using expired meds isn't great. people do what they can with the opportunities they have. that's all it is. and that's what's led to the "opioid crisis", that's what's led to OD deaths. people meet their perceived needs in the best way they're able to.

does fentanyl really come from Canada? I really fucking doubt that, but who knows

Only maple fentanyl.

fentan-eh

Only if it's made in the Fentanille region, otherwise it's just sparkling opioid.

Tim Hortons' Glazed Fentanyl

fentaneil young

From what I've read, Canadian fentanyl tends to stay in Canada or go overseas. Very little of it goes to the US.

Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted about 19 kilograms of fentanyl at the northern border, compared with almost 9,600 kilograms at the border with Mexico, where cartels mass-produce the drug.

Financially, it doesn’t make sense for Canadian criminal groups to focus on exporting fentanyl south, said Daniel Anson, the director of intelligence and investigations at the Canada Border Services Agency. “Mexican fentanyl, due to the cost and the street price, is very difficult to compete with in the U.S.,” he said.

Canada’s public safety agency said that while local crime groups producing opioids tend to service the domestic market, they have also expanded to other markets, including in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The Australian police in 2022 intercepted a large fentanyl shipment from Canada, about five million doses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/world/canada/canada-fentanyl-trump.html

<Geddy Lee voice> "I will choose Fentanyl!"

XP Another example of Trump finding a minor problem and approaching it in the dumbest way possible.

it's just insane that Canada needs to police the export of nine kilos rather than the U.S. DEA being tasked with rooting out the import, but whatevs

xp

Really more like inventing a pretext out of lies, but ymmv.