VIDEO – MODERN LEPROSY? –
Aug. 28, 2023 – “There was a change in his behavior when he started using xylazine — he started going cuckoo,” his heartbroken mother, Merri Eddy, recently told The Post. “I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was something different than the fentanyl … It was very frustrating, because I couldn’t help him.”
Heartbroken relatives aren’t the only ones at a loss. Medical professionals have also been struggling to respond to the nefarious tranquilizer as it snakes its way into the wider drug supply, complicating nearly every aspect of treatment and recovery.
“The clinical picture becomes much more diabolical, a lot harder to follow — 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 Post in a recent interview.
Overdoses involving xylazine are much harder to treat, 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 no 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.”
