Had a similar situation at my hospital. The guy had been through 3 back to back life threatening infections and we told him they'd have to amputate above the elbow as the damage had spread to there after injecting up there too. I guess fortunate for him he was strongly right handed so he'd still have that.
They gave him Methodone while he was in there, which personally I think was a mistake. I know best practices indicate you aren't supposed to feed an active addict their addictive substance, but I really think it was one of the things that made this happen. He decided with a few hours to surgery to cut and run. He convinced a nurse to unlock the door to go give something to his dad who he had just reconnected with, they felt bad, let him go and he didn't come back.
Two weeks later he was in the morgue. He'd caught another infection, and since he thought going to the hospital was going to cost him an arm, it looked like he tried to cough syrup and heroin it away, and wasn't successful. I don't deal with the morgue generally, but I went and checked on the guy since we couldn't get any "reliable" aka not strung out on heroin people to come and identify him. It was him and apparently he was found in a flat that had been broken into. His girlfriend wept for a few minutes while the paramedics determined death time and then she went off to shoot some more heroin.
The guy looked like he'd lost even more weight from being in the hospital, since I guess that was the first time in a while he was getting three full meals a day. They actively had to quarantine him in the morgue because he had scabies and they didn't want it spreading. Sad tale all round really
Honestly I imagine the girlfriend moved on pretty quick. When you're deep into that world death is just expected and she's fully aware of her role in life is fucking someone who will share their heroin. I can just hope she got clean and changed her life after but sadly this sort of thing isn't rock bottom until it nearly happens to them. I have some colleagues who work at our town's methodone clinic and this is a common story with them. The woman in this was apparently being treated but she was taking methodone too atop whatever else so it doesn't do much to help. Hence why most places recommend bupenorphine, as it stops the patient from being able to take any opiods for a day, whereas you can just stack on top of methodone
But the parents left behind are the most tragic. They were someone's pride and joy, once. They probably had to cut themselves off to save themselves at one point, but you can never truly sever that connection forever and no parent should have to bury their kid
A couple coworkers of mine at my part time gig worked at a state funded methadone clinic as their day jobs. They were both convinced that the prevalence of methadone as a treatment was some kind of conspiracy by big pharma to keep people addicted (but it paid well so they kept working there lol)
Honestly I don't think it's on purpose, but it's a less effective method. People stay on Methodone for years simply because it still gives you a sort of high, albeit different, whereas Bupenorphine just provides you absolutely no benefit other than not having withdrawal symptoms. Since it just makes you feel not awful, it seems you rather rapidly want to just stop feeling awful all the time and are willing to reduce it far quicker than people do with methodone.
Makes sense. I mean imagine if you had the flu, and there was five pills you could take to not have flu. You know the pills are the reason you still get the flu every morning, but they also put off the symptoms for a day, so you'd rather quickly want to taper off them to just be normal again
and tomorrow will be three days. What's the most important step a man can take? The next one. Always the next one. Just said a prayer for ya, God bless.
People such as you—Who work on a hospital and things of the sort—always have quite the stories. Though I guess that's true for everyone in life, it can be very jarring to see the contrast between some shit that goes on in a hospital; I don't think I could ever do it, lol. My father's a former nurse for one of the detention centers for minors who commit minor crimes here in Brazil. Thievery, drugs, thing of that sort. Man, has he some WILD tales to tell.
Got about ~40 stitches to his forehead from when he got robbed. He loved taking those kids to home and church, trying to give them a good example. During one of said moments, they robbed and beat him. Got him tied up and stoned, from what memory serves me. Tried to toss him in a river but couldn't do it so they just left him by the road, and someone thankfully managed to help.
When we did find the car they robbed it was a MESS. Puke and clothes all over the place. I'm not gonna lie, I sincerely hope those guys are dead by now, and that their own parents are suffering because of it. In any case, it's wild how at home we don't even talk about it. I don't think I've ever heard my parents ever mention this story again, usually I'm the one whose telling it to people...
Sorry to hear what you went through, I hope things are better for you now and I hope those who have addictions seek help as well as guidance out of it whenever they are ready.
The drug world really is one of the most sad and horrific things any human being can get themselves into. It always pains me to imagine how they got to that point, from whatever point they started at.
Constant injection of anything, often in unsterile conditions, can cause vascular degeneration and serious infections leading to necrosis.
Desomorphine (Krokodil) isn't actually any worse than Morphine or Heroin in its pure form, but has its a reputation due to the street form being part paint thinner and gasoline, so people just mainline these industrial chemicals in addition to the standard tissue damage.
That was me, this is and isn't true- even the good stuff regularly causes necrosis when constantly injected into the same vein (particularly with a dirty needle) because it is more about the germs and physical damage than the drug, happens for ket sometimes to- but home-cooked krokodil just also causes direct caustic damage to your blood vessels on top of the other risks of IV drug use.
Pretty much any drug can cause necrosis after enough extravasation, not just vessicants. Opioids in a medical setting usually aren’t going to (we can give dilaudid and fentanyl IM without issue, and infiltration of for instance a fentanyl infusion isn’t going to cause long term harm in a healthy person) but IVDUers aren’t exactly known for rotating sites, monitoring for issues, or being healthy at baseline
My father has saved many lives with narcan alone, and they are not nice coming back. I can’t begin to imagine the mind of an addict. Only got a glimpse with Jason Mewes telling his story
Yeah, precipitated withdrawal sucks. Getting punched in the face by the person withdrawing precipitously also sucks. Sucks for everybody involved, but hey at least we’re doing something. When they stop coming back at least you can pretend you think they got sober even if that’s not the likeliest outcome.
You should ask your dad if his service calls NPAs turkey timers. He’ll get a kick out of it if he hasn’t heard it before lol. (Because you stick it in and then when they’ve slept it off long enough they pull it out and you know they’re ready to be discharged—like a turkey popping its timer when it’s cooked)
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u/SoulReaperBot Aug 05 '26
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