US doctors alarmed at rapid spread of Zombie Drug ‘Xylazine’ in New York

Drug overdose and its tragic consequences is not new to the United States, but it has become a chronic worry on the streets of New York recently. Data by the US federal government indicates that a drug overdose claims one life every five minutes in the country.

But now the flesh-eating “zombie drug” is causing alarm on the US streets, literally rotting people’s bodies, and doctors and other medical professionals appear to be struggling to effectively save people from the disastrous effects of the drug– ‘Xylazine’.

“Zombie Drug”, as it is known in the United States, is a drug used as a tranquillizer on cows and horses. It is flooding the country, with people getting it through illegal means more often than not. Dealers often mix it with other illegal drugs like fentanyl and heroin and sell the deadly cocktail to potential customers.

Tranq is posing a significant challenge for medical experts as it has overshadowed the other drugs coming into the country through illicit ways. This is making the situation very complicated and thus rendering treatment difficult.

“The clinical picture becomes much more diabolical, a lot harder to follow, and a lot more can go wrong when tranq is involved,” Dr Paolo Coppola, the board-certified co-founder of Victory Recovery Partners in Massapequa Park, told The New York Post in a recent interview.

Drug overdoses involving xylazine are much harder to treat, Dr Coppola said, because the miracle opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan doesn’t work on the sedative.

“When an addict uses a speedball of cocaine and heroin, we can deal with that without a problem. You reverse the heroin so they start breathing again, and you wait for the cocaine to finish up,” he said.

“Xylazine doesn’t work that way,” the doctor continued. “When they come to the emergency room, you fully expect them to wake up when you push the Narcan… but all of a sudden it’s not really working; they’re not waking up.”

Dr Coppola explained that the existence of tranquillizers frequently prompts doctors to turn to substitute medications as a means to stabilise a patient’s diminishing blood pressure or rapidly declining heart rate.

“We think, ‘Wait a minute, he’s on suboxone and he’s on a good enough dose, so why is he still irritable and anxious? Why is his blood pressure up? Why is he having seizures?” Dr Coppola said, referring to the medication used to treat narcotic dependence.

“If they’ve been using xylazine long enough with their fentanyl, they’ll have withdrawal effects from the xylazine, which makes it terribly difficult for doctors treating such cases,” he said.