“Krokodil” (Crocodile) is a drug made by cooking codeine with xylene (paint thinner), hydrochloric acid, and red phosphorus that is very popular in Russia and is similar to what methamphetamine is throughout the USA. However, the difference is that while poorly made methamphetamine (of which the majority of “street” meth is) will destroy one’s teeth, keep one awake, and cause veritable insanity, Krokodil provides a “high” more intense than heroin for about an hour and will “rot” the point at which it entered the body. If it was smoked, it will rot the user’s face off. If injected, it rots the skin and tissue around the injection site. The wounds look so disgusting that they appear as though as crocodile bit the person on the spot, and as such is why it is called “crocodile.”
This drug has been popular throughout eastern Europe and particularly northwestern Russia for a long time. However, its use is spreading across Europe and is now found in the UK according to a report:
A FLESH eating drug which rots the skin and turns it scaly may have arrived in Britain, according to reports.
Deadly Krokodil, known as the “cannibal drug”, is a homemade hallucinogenic opiate that is up to 10 times the strength of heroin, and far cheaper.
And it may now be in the UK after already wreaking havoc in Colombia, Russia and Ukraine.
According to Gloucester Live a woman there was reportedly unable to attend court because of open sores on her body from injecting it.
Cheltenham Magistrates’ Court heard the defendant in her 40s was being treated for “horrific” open sores in Gloucestershire Royal Hospital after taking the drug.
The intravenous drug, which leaves users looking like the walking dead, spread like wildfire through Russia and reached its deadly peak in 2013.
Branded “the world’s deadliest drug” in 2016 it turns a user’s skin green and scaly around the area where they inject it as blood vessels burst and the skin rots away.
Medically named desomorphine, its use exploded in Russia because it can be made using over-the-counter painkillers.
Sergey Agalakov, narcotics expert and psychologist, said: “A person becomes a zombie with their body rotting, the rancid smell of which is detected a few steps away.”
Police in Gloucester said they have not confirmed that the drug is being used in the area and it is not known how widely used the drug is in the UK.
A spokesman said: “We currently have no information to suggest any significant issue with krokodil on the streets of Gloucestershire.
“However we remain alert to new drugs being used in the county and have a well-established process in place to alert all necessary agencies should the picture change.” (source)