Beachway Therapy Centre – What Is the Role of Fentanyl in the Recent Surge of Drug Overdoses?
Fentanyl. This word has found its way into our culture, leaping off front-page headlines in our newspapers, as we begin to learn about the sorrow and devastation the drug behind the word is bringing us, as individuals and as a society.
Fentanyl is different: This is the dominant story about this opioid; that we had all better sit up straighter and listen because this is a drug that is wildly addictive and starkly lethal. And the statistics do lend authority to the stories that we are beginning to hear, in our communities and in our media.
The Washington Post recently reported that in Virginia, deaths from overdoses increased by 38% from 2015 …show more content…
Where is illegal fentanyl coming from?
Breaking Bad introduced mainstream America to the crystal meth lab, where a high school chemistry teacher and his former student cooked up a crystal-clear form of the lethal drug, though if a TV series were to be created around a fentanyl lab, it would be definitely be set in China.
Drug-making entrepreneurs in China have been creating four forms of fentanyl that are legal to sell in their country, and then shipping them to other countries, primarily in North America. CNN reported that the Chinese government began to ban the manufacture of these forms of synthetic fentanyl in March of 2017, though experts await the arrival of new forms of the drugs on American soil.
How does fentanyl affect the human brain?
Opioid drugs like morphine, heroin and fentanyl make human beings feel a kind of euphoria and an extraordinary relaxation; it is this release from being, this blissful state, that draws users to opioids.
Opioids attach themselves to receptors in the part of the brain that control pain and emotion, causing dopamine levels to spike and sending the user into a desirable …show more content…
Fentanyl is killing more people than other opioids. Indeed, as this article is being written, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio is trying to get a bill passed that would make it easier for border control agents to detect and then confiscate fentanyl, saying that,” Fentanyl has taken far too many lives in our state.” Why?
Fentanyl is potent
Fentanyl is intensely potent; Stat News published a remarkable photo that shows two glass vials, one filled with a typically fatal dose of fentanyl and the other with a typically fatal dose of heroin: The fentanyl is barely visible. Indeed, medical experts have determined that a person who is unused to taking opiates and tries fentanyl is likely to die.
Harvard Health Publications points out that it is fentanyl’s potency that makes the drug so appealing to its sellers: If you add a tiny bit of fentanyl to heroin, your client gets high and you spend very little money. Also, a heroin user who does not know they are taking fentanyl with their drug of choice is endangered in a new way.
Fentanyl acts
Fentanyl. This word has found its way into our culture, leaping off front-page headlines in our newspapers, as we begin to learn about the sorrow and devastation the drug behind the word is bringing us, as individuals and as a society.
Fentanyl is different: This is the dominant story about this opioid; that we had all better sit up straighter and listen because this is a drug that is wildly addictive and starkly lethal. And the statistics do lend authority to the stories that we are beginning to hear, in our communities and in our media.
The Washington Post recently reported that in Virginia, deaths from overdoses increased by 38% from 2015 …show more content…
Where is illegal fentanyl coming from?
Breaking Bad introduced mainstream America to the crystal meth lab, where a high school chemistry teacher and his former student cooked up a crystal-clear form of the lethal drug, though if a TV series were to be created around a fentanyl lab, it would be definitely be set in China.
Drug-making entrepreneurs in China have been creating four forms of fentanyl that are legal to sell in their country, and then shipping them to other countries, primarily in North America. CNN reported that the Chinese government began to ban the manufacture of these forms of synthetic fentanyl in March of 2017, though experts await the arrival of new forms of the drugs on American soil.
How does fentanyl affect the human brain?
Opioid drugs like morphine, heroin and fentanyl make human beings feel a kind of euphoria and an extraordinary relaxation; it is this release from being, this blissful state, that draws users to opioids.
Opioids attach themselves to receptors in the part of the brain that control pain and emotion, causing dopamine levels to spike and sending the user into a desirable …show more content…
Fentanyl is killing more people than other opioids. Indeed, as this article is being written, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio is trying to get a bill passed that would make it easier for border control agents to detect and then confiscate fentanyl, saying that,” Fentanyl has taken far too many lives in our state.” Why?
Fentanyl is potent
Fentanyl is intensely potent; Stat News published a remarkable photo that shows two glass vials, one filled with a typically fatal dose of fentanyl and the other with a typically fatal dose of heroin: The fentanyl is barely visible. Indeed, medical experts have determined that a person who is unused to taking opiates and tries fentanyl is likely to die.
Harvard Health Publications points out that it is fentanyl’s potency that makes the drug so appealing to its sellers: If you add a tiny bit of fentanyl to heroin, your client gets high and you spend very little money. Also, a heroin user who does not know they are taking fentanyl with their drug of choice is endangered in a new way.
Fentanyl acts