Xylazine is a non-opioid cow and horse tranquilizer, and recently, it has been identified as a new recreational drug sold on the streets in America. Known colloquially as “Tranq,” it is a mix of the veterinary tranquilizer combined with the well-known and fatal opiate fentanyl.1 Combining Xylazine with Fentanyl prolongs the high, which is why dealers are so adamant about cutting them together. Xylazine is often also cut with other substances, like heroin, cocaine, alcohol, methadone, etc. It can be ingested by snorting, swallowing, inhaling, or injecting the drug. Symptoms of taking Xylazine include drowsiness, amnesia, slow breathing, slow heart rate, and low blood pressure.3
Learn more about Xylazine here:
The DEA estimates that Xylazine use as a street drug has increased by 61% in the northeast USA in the last year. 2 It is not currently approved for human use, and repeated exposure can result in skin ulcers, rotting skin, pus-filled abscesses on the skin, and various complications related to that.3 Raw wounds can transform into a scaly crust of dead skin tissue, ultimately leading to amputation if not treated promptly.
Since Xylazine is a non-opioid tranquilizer, the life-saving opioid antagonist that combats opioid overdoses, naloxone, is ineffective. This is because naloxone works by reversing opioid overdoses and Xylazine is not an opioid, naloxone does not work on it. The symptoms of Xylazine mentioned earlier, such as slow breathing, heart rate, and low blood pressure, can be life-threatening.
With no drug to combat a potential overdose, Xylazine is extremely dangerous and a genuine public health threat. Additionally, many facilities are not even testing for Xylazine in suspected overdoses, resulting in the potential artificial deflation of case numbers.4
Emergency medical services should handle suspected overdoses. Please refer to these resources from the CDC about what to do in a suspected overdose.
References
3https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/xylazine
4 Joseph Friedman, Fernando Montero, Phillippe Bourgois, Rafik Wahbi, Daniel Dye, David Goodman-Meza, Chelsea Shover, Xylazine spreads across the US: A growing component of the increasingly synthetic and polysubstance overdose crisis, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Volume 233, 2022.