Opioid addiction has been a massive problem for decades across the United States, and despite its effectiveness at blunting severe pain, the lack of regulations and excessive prescriptions end up contributing to the growing opioid epidemic. Some tell-tale signs of opioid addiction include the following:
- Shallow or slow breathing rate
- Physical agitation
- Poor decision making
- Abandoning responsibilities
- Mood swings
- Irritability
- Depression
- Lowered motivation
- Anxiety attacks
If you spot the red flags above, it’s important to confront the problem as soon as possible since growing increasingly dependent on opioids can be risky in more ways than one. Even if the user in question does not intend to abuse the drug, a growing dependence can lead to overdose, which is an emergency medical condition that causes the following symptoms:
- Unresponsiveness
- Slow, irregular breathing, or not breathing at all
- Slow, erratic pulse, or no pulse
- Vomiting
- Loss of consciousness
- Small pupils in their eyes
When someone you know is suffering from an opioid overdose, don’t hesitate to call 911 and seek medical assistance as soon as possible. Moving forward, understanding the drivers behind the large-scale addiction means delving deeper into the two biggest figures fueling the abuse: carfentanil and fentanyl.
What Is Fentanyl?
Derived as a narcotic analgesic from morphine, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, Schedule II prescription drug primarily used to treat pain from surgical conditions. While it plays a pivotal role in the healthcare industry as pharmaceutical medications like Actiq, Duragesic, or Sublimaze act as the most effective painkillers for patients, fentanyl also has an established presence in black markets due to illegal production and distribution in the streets.
Medically prescribed fentanyl can be absorbed, injected, or ingested, but illegally-made fentanyl is sold in the streets in the form of a powder, blotter paper, pills, eye droppers, or nasal sprays. Just like any other opioid, it releases neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine by binding to the brain’s natural opioid receptors. That’s why fentanyl and other forms of opioids—synthetic or not—cause a sense of euphoria that takes the mind to cloud nine, but at the cost of one’s consciousness, mental and physical functionality, or even life.
What Are the Physical Effects of Fentanyl?
- Euphoria
- Drowsiness
- Stomach problems
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Confusion or cognitive difficulty
- Constipation
- Sedation
- Respiratory depression
- Heart rate and blood pressure changes
- Unconsciousness
Taking medically prescribed fentanyl can still cause the effects mentioned above; that’s why it also has a high tendency of developing drug dependency on all kinds of users. Aside from being dangerously potent, abusers may also put their lives at greater risk since unregulated fentanyl found in the streets is often diluted with other equally damaging drugs such as heroin, cocaine, MDMA, and methamphetamine.
Other drug interactions make fentanyl deadlier to abuse since it brings people closer to reaching an accidental overdose, especially when made as an illicit drug instead of pharmaceutical-grade opioids. For patients who are prescribed fentanyl, it’s critical to purchase from medical sources only like your local pharmacy or a medical professional.
What Is Carfentanil?
Many people confuse carfentanil with fentanyl since it’s essentially a copy of the more well-known synthetic opioid, but the difference in its chemical composition and potency are astounding.
While fentanyl is infamous for being a narcotic, analgesic derivative that is a hundred times more powerful than morphine, carfentanil takes the drug’s strength levels further as it doubles the potency of its predecessor.
Being ten thousand times more potent than morphine, this proves that carfentanil is extremely deadly to humans and is only approved in veterinary medicine practices for sedating larger animals like elephants. Breathing the synthetic drugs alone can trigger side effects; that’s why veterinarians that deploy carfentanil on larger mammals often have to wear protective gear throughout the process.
What Are the Adverse Effects of Carfentanil?
Even the size of a grain of salt from carfentanil can cause the following side effects:
- Nausea
- Drowsiness
- Restlessness
- Sweating
- Runny nose
- Insomnia
- Difficulty concentrating
- Depression
- Muscle aches
- Anxiety
- Disorientation
- Pinpoint pupils
- Clammy skin
- Sedation
- Death
After all, carfentanil cannot be consumed by humans and is designed for larger animals only, so there are no precautions a person can take to mitigate its fatal effects. A single touch or inhalation can cause a killer overdose, but that doesn’t stop the opioid epidemic from making room for one of the deadliest additions in the battle against opioid addiction.
The Dangerous Rise of Carfentanil Use Among Humans
As mentioned above, carfentanil is not created for human consumption, but the life-threatening drug still finds its way in drug-fueled, back alleys everywhere. This paved the way for the rise of the phenomenon known as the “gray death,” which mixes heroin, fentanyl, and carfentanil into one lethal dose.
Carfentanil takes on a similar form of illegal fentanyl, which appears as a powder, spray, tablet, patch, or blotter paper. But unlike fentanyl, carfentanil is significantly easier to absorb or inhale accidentally; that’s why fatalities involving this drug are rising at an alarming rate as drug dealers pass it off as heroin to oblivious drug users.
Even the DEA finds the boom of carfentanil extremely worrisome not only for the drug’s severe death toll and fast-acting overdose but even emergency medications like Naloxone or Narcan are no longer effective in stopping the effects. Unlike heroin or fentanyl overdose, medications that rapidly reverse its effects must be employed repeatedly within a short timeframe for it to stop the deadly symptoms from progressing.
The Bottom Line: Understanding the Destructive Nature of Fentanyl and Carfentanil
People often use the two synthetic opioids interchangeably, but there are distinctions worth noting since the different side effects play a role in the fatality of these similar drugs. Fentanyl can be tricky to spot in the streets since it is often colorless and odorless. For this reason, it’s always advised to seek medical professionals only for refilling prescription fentanyl.
It’s important to expand your awareness of the growing carfentanil abuse, too, whether or not you know someone who has opioid dependence, since it poses the kind of perilousness that is tens of thousands times lethal than illicitly-manufactured fentanyl. With that being said, it helps to collaborate with different therapeutic groups, programs, and other treatment plans when tapering off opioid addiction.