Florida is a weird place in so many ways. Remember a few years back, when the news was talking about people getting high on “bath salts” and eating each other’s faces? That was Florida.
But it’s no longer only in Florida. One designer drug from that family of stimulants, called Flakka, is making headlines again in other states.
And every story seems more bonkers than the last.
A couple of years ago, we told you about a Florida Man, high on Flakka, going streaking while believing that he’s being chased… but what is Flakka?
Because as entertained as we are by Riverdale‘s drug storyline about “jingle-jangle” this season, we don’t normally expect for serious drugs to have such whimsical names off of The CW’s teen dramas.
Flakka is a designer drug. It’s a stimulant, also known as alpha-pvp (which sounds like an energy drink marketed to gamer bros), that belongs to the “bath salts” family.
The small pink crystals can be snorted, injected, or smoked. But that doesn’t mean that it should.
The issue with this type of stimulant is that delirium, violence, and erratic behavior can be the result.
Particularly if someone even slightly overdoses.
Most of us think of bath salts and go “oh, that’s so 2015 — it’s almost 2018 and it’s all about opioids,” but they’re making a resurgence.
And despite the public association between Flakka and Florida, the designer drug is making headlines beyond America’s fetid peninsula, in places like Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas.
A former narcotics investigator named Jason Grellner, who is now the safety and security manager at Mercy Hospital, warns Fox News about increasing ER visits believed to have been caused by Flakka.
“What we see in the emergency department at Mercy is people brought in by private ambulance or law enforcement who are having a full-blown episode.”
And he says that these drugs don’t just send people to the ER — they also make patients more difficult to treat.
“The nursing and physician staffs are in danger from these patients.”
Again, we’re talking about people who might suddenly have violent impulses and serious delusions.
Also, it’s incredibly difficult to diagnose.
“There’s no blood test or urine test, no way for physicians to know what the user has actually ingested. They have to treat the patient symptomatically and monitor them constantly for their mental and physical states.”
And he even speaks to what patients might be experiencing:
“They’re seeing double, they’re seeing dragons. They believe wholeheartedly that it’s actually occurring.”
That might sound like a fun adventure, but hallucinations and delusions can lead people to harm themselves, to harm others, and generally get themselves into a whole heap of trouble.
Like the Florida Man we mentioned who believed so strongly that he was being chased that he fled and refused to stop … or put on any clothes.
Another man tried to break into a police station because, in his delusional state, he thought that he was being pursued.
So most people aren’t hallucinating anything as fun or whimsical as dragons, folks. It sounds like Flakka takes their worst anxieties and makes them real.
And we think that the four people who made headlines this month in Missouri probably didn’t have as good of a time as they’d hoped.
The four of them were disrobing in the streets, barking, and breaking into multiple businesses and also into people’s homes while just completely out of their dang minds.
Two of them needed to be rushed to the hospital.
Flakka is hitting hard in rural communities that lack the resources or experience to deal with — or even recognize — the problem.
One Tennessee precinct ran out of taser cartridges. Some residents in some areas call the police because they believe that conspirators are hiding in trees.
Arresting people who are in delusional states can also be dangerous for everyone involved, as the people on Flakka may believe that the police are there to hurt them.
You might think that the government response would be to make sure that dosages are carefully prescribed so that people don’t overdose. And perhaps for the government to provide (or businesses to provide) a safe environment for using them.
Instead, the government has taken steps to limit distribution and to make taking Flakka and similar drugs illegal. That has not, historically, worked out so well.
