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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
MODERN LEPROSY? –
June 11, 2023 – This is what recovery looks like for drug users disfigured by xylazine, or “tranq,” an animal tranquilizer mixed into America’s increasingly toxic illicit drug supply.
Fentanyl, potent and ubiquitous, has pushed overdose deaths to records beyond 100,000 a year. Xylazine adds the risk of rotted flesh and open wounds for users.
People who had taken xylazine began arriving at emergency rooms around Philadelphia nearly 20 years ago with pernicious wounds requiring surgery, amputation and weeks of hospitalization. Today, patients injured by xylazine show up at hospitals around the city every day.
Tissue beneath the lesions caused by xylazine can die within hours. The damage sometimes leads to amputation. Cases of such wounds have quadrupled in the past two years, city health officials said.
The repeat exposure is pushing doctors and aid groups to invent new care techniques for xylazine users who often need addiction treatment to carry them through long hospital stays that accompany amputation and reconstructive surgeries.
READ@WSJ
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