Krokodil – The most dangerous new drug!

This new opiate for the poor was made in Russia as a substitute for heroin, which is becoming very expensive and unavailable for addicts.  It can be made at home, and from it, the skin of addicts becomes greenish and scaly, just like reptiles’. 

Krokodil (Crocodile) is the latest drug that can be made at home, and it first appeared in Russia. It is an opiate for the poor, and its effects are frightening. It is named “Krokodil” because its poisonous substances are quickly changing the look of the skin of the addicts, which is becoming greenish and scaly, like reptiles’ skin.

Russia has more than two million heroin addicts, more than any other country in the world. Efforts to reduce the flow of heroin from Afghanistan has led to its limited supply, increased price on the streets, and for those addicts who can not afford the next dose, even more terrible and ghastly thing – a drug that can be made at home. Its medical name is desomorphine and it is a synthetic opiate more powerful than heroin. It is made with a complex process of mixing and chemical reactions, which addicts know very well and do it several times a day.

And while heroin costs from 20 to 50 Euros, desomorphine can be “boiled” from Codeine-based pills for headache that cost two Euros per pack, and other ingredients that everyone has at home and can be very cheap to buy in the store. In case the vein is missed, an abscess is immediately appearing on the skin. The addicts who are using this drug for several years look terrible. Their skin becomes grayish, rotten, and, in the latter stages, you can actually see their bones. People are literally rotting to death.

Four years ago, Russian heroin addicts first discovered how to make a "Krokodil". Since then, the number of addicts is in rise, and it reached a peak in recent months. Every year, about 30.000 addicts die in Russia, which is one third of addicts’ deaths worldwide. It is estimated that about five percent of drug addicts in Russia use “Krokodil”, and about 100.000 more of them are using some other type of home-made opiate.

When someone goes to rehabilitation from heroin, symptoms last from five to ten days, after which there is great danger of their return.

With “Krokodil”, this is more complicated. Pains are lasting up to one month, and they are unbearable. To endure pain, rehabilitators have to be injected with extremely strong tranquilizers.

You can recognize “Krokodil” users by their specific smell of iodine, which is infiltrated into their clothes and can not be removed with washing.  Each apartment in which the “Krokodil” was boiled can be forgotten as a place to live because the smell can never be eliminated.

Addicts have no problem buying codeine tablets that are sold without a prescription, and pharmacists do not refuse to sell them even though they know why exactly they are bought.  The solution is obvious: ban the sale of codeine. But although the authorities are aware of the problem that lasts more than a year, they almost do nothing to resolve it.

Zhenya, former addict

“The effect of “krokodil” lasts from 90 minutes to two hours”, says Zhenya, a former addict.

“You don't sleep much when you're on krokodil, as you need to wake up every couple of hours for another hit. The cooking process takes at least half an hour, so being a krokodil addict is basically a full-time job. At the time we were cooking it at our place, and loads of people came round and pitched in. For three days we just kept on making it. By the end, we all staggered out yellow, exhausted and stinking of iodine.” –says Zhenya.

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The saddest billionaire- John Paul Getty III

He was known for his enormous wealth and inheritance, but also and for being kidnapped in Italy when he was a boy. Because of a heroin overdose when he was 25, he remained paralyzed for the rest of his life.

Most people do not understand the expression “The rich also cry”, and they are asking themselves why would the rich cry and be sad. However, in the case of billionaire John Paul Getty III (1956-2011), this expression is not far from reality. This successor of great oil empire, who died at the age of 54, had plenty of unfortunate episodes in his life. That is why now, after his death, which occurred due to failure of vital organs, he is called “the saddest billionaire”.

John Paul Getty III was also known as “Golden Hippie”. For those who knew Getty’s lifestyle this nickname is completely logical.  He spent much of his childhood in Rome, where he socialized with artists, and leftist bohemians. The Italian capital was also the place where his teenage idyll was brutally interrupted. There, when he was 16, John Paul Getty was kidnapped. His kidnappers demanded $ 17 million from his family, but Getty’s grandfather, John Paul Getty I (1892-1976), refused to pay them.

“I have 14 other grandchildren, and if I pay one penny now I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.” - said John Paul Getty I, at that time one of the richest people in the world and founder of California's famous museum that bears his name.

At the same time, his father, John Paul Getty II (1932-2003), was unable to pay that sum of money, because, at that time, he was rehabilitating from drug addiction in one rehabilitation center in London.

In the beginning, his family thought that his kidnapping was just a joke and they didn’t do anything. Four months later, a package arrived at the offices of a Rome newspaper. It contained a lock of red hair and a moldy human ear. A message that came along claimed that these belong to Getty, and threatened: "This is Paul's ear. If we don't get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits."

The ransom was paid only after his grandfather, John Paul Getty I, managed to reduce the ransom to the figure of $ 2.8 million in cash with "bargaining". He borrowed that money to his son, Getty II, but he warned him that it was just a “loan” and that he expects his money back with 4% interest.

Soon after that, a truck driver spotted John Paul Getty III along the road, some 160 kilometers south of Naples. He spent five months in captivity. When he wanted to thank his grandfather for saving him, Getty I refused to talk to him.

John Paul Getty III was born in 1956, as the first child of John Paul Getty Jr. and actress Abigail Harris, who were already divorced when he was kidnapped. When he was 18, he married Gisela Martine Schmidt who was a photographer and an artist. In 1975, he got a son with Gisela, Balthazar Getty. He also adopted Gisela’s daughter, Anna from her first marriage, and gave her his surname. He and Gisela divorced in 1993.

Almost a decade before that, more precisely, in 1981, Getty suffered a stroke caused by heroine overdose. From then and on he needed constant care because he was strapped to a wheelchair. As a consequence of the stroke, Getty was quadriplegic and nearly blind.

Life of the Getty family was a movie-like tragic story. Getty dynasty made their first millions dealing with oil, but after that, they expanded their business to almost all branches. What is bizarre in the case of this family is the fact that a large number of its members died of a drug overdose.

Their empire was established by unusual oil tycoon John Paul Getty I, in the first half of the 20th century.  Getty I had five wives and five sons (one of his sons died at the age of 12).

Getty family was always in the spotlight. Until recently, they had  one of the strangest and richest couples in America – curly and physically neglected Peter Getty, who never did anything and is spending his time knitting, watching pornography and playing video games, and his wife Jacqui Getty, which is adorned by Hollywood stars. It is said that behind all those billions, Peter is nothing more than an abuser. His wife didn’t had the strength to leave him until he started to cheat in her with other women. Those who know Peter say that when he is travelling somewhere, he never caries a bag because he buys everything he needs when he arrives where he is going.

In 2006 when she was filing for divorce, Jacqui described her husband as a person who became heavily addicted to cocaine and soon after, started to, mentally and physically, abuse her.

“Peter had a very bad, violent temper during the last year or two of our marriage; he made at least one threat to kill me, he hit me so hard that he broke my forearm (not at a joint), he has choked me and physically pushed me.” – Jacqui described her husband in the divorce documents. “He told me 'I could kill you and get away with it”. She also said that Peter, because of his enormous wealth, has no sense for good and evil and that he often said to her: “I can do anything. Because I'm Getty”.

Anyway, Jacqui Getty is a famous stylist who worked on many movies. Among the first who noticed her talent was Demi Moor, who met Jacqui at one shop in the late eighties. It was Jacqui who picked a dress for Moor in the famous scene of the movie “Indecent proposal”, when Demi approaches Robert Redford.

Howard Hughes – playboy, pilot and a hermit

One of the most bizarre billionaires was Howard Hughes. Hughes was successful in everything he did, whether it was designing aircrafts, piloting, film production...he even managed to seduce Hollywood beauties like Katharine Hepburn.

In 1935, he constructed an airplane with whom he set an airspeed record of 567,46 km/h. Two years later, he set a transcontinental airspeed record for flying from one end of America to another. In 1938, he flew around the world in just 91 hours and 14 minutes.

However, due to an obsessive dedication to work, addiction to drugs and agonizing among many lovers, he suffered his first nervous breakdown. Soon after, he demanded that everyone who comes in contact with him, wears white gloves. After second nervous breakdown, he spent his days in a hotel, in a closed room, where he sat completely naked in a white leather armchair.

He spent the last years of his life wandering around the world. He resided in luxurious hotels but, before his arrival, his employees were obliged to sterilize the rooms where he stayed. When he arrived to Las Vegas in 1967, he didn’t have a reservation for a luxury suite at the Hotel “Desert Inn", so he bought the entire hotel. He also bought television station KLAS-TV, which had to show movies until late into the night so he wouldn’t be bored.

He travelled in a car with welded windows, in which he had installed a special air cleaner that cost more than the vehicle itself and occupied more space then the engine.

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Brazil's crusade for Olympics

When Brazil won the organization of Football World Cup and Rio the 2016 Olympic Games, the Brazilian statesmen were thankful to FIFA and IOC. These two organizations closed their eyes to the fact that Rio is the city with the highest murder rate in the world, and the authorities have no control over favelas, which are run by local gangs and almost represent a country in the country.

In efforts to change that, the Brazilians have hired Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, as a consultant. Known for being able to calm things even in Harlem, Giuliani’s job is to use his know-how in Brazil.  Giuliani is known for his strategy of "zero tolerance", according to which everyone who breaks the system must be punished, from the Mafia to the sellers of hot dogs on the street.

There is just one catch – New York is not Rio and Harlem is not Brazilian favelas. Police actions there are not just fight against crime, they are literally war against crime. Police entry into favelas is referred in local media as "liberation of territory".

The operation of the police and the army against gangs in November 2010, on the territory of Complexo do Alemão, the complex of 15 favelas, was the biggest operation in the history of liberation of favelas. Unfortunately, this operation showed that even Giuliani’s "zero tolerance" will not that easily set things right in the favelas . This historic operation was named “reconquista”(reconquest), because the Brazilians are doing exactly that, reconquesting their occupied territory. 

Complexo do Alemão is one of the most famous favelas. Until the operation in November 2010, it was controlled by the Red Command, a gang of over a thousand drug dealers and arms merchants. However, Giuliani’s "zero tolerance" is now only functioning if the military and the police constantly keep favelas under siege. But even that is not easy to do because of the "philosophy of favelas”. Favelas are not just some hovels framed in the squatter settlements – they have become a way of life.

After five day of heavy fire, the Governor of Rio triumphantly announced the liberation of Complexo do Alemão territory. What remained in the shadow of that triumph was the fact that more than 40 people, some of whom were civilians, were accidentally caught in the crossfire, and were killed. The Brazilian media were fascinated with the fact that the police and army, for the first time, acted as one.

This attack forced the opposing gangs to unite, for the first time in history. This means that real fights are yet to come. The bandits have already started to burn cars and city buses.  The criminals are using this tried recipe for years.  Whenever the police tries to enter one of their favela, they start with the riots.

The Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, says that, in this way, they are trying to create a picture for the public that will suggest that the authorities have no control.  "We do not want peace with criminals and terrorists. This time we will not retreat”, harshly says Paes.

A large number of criminals fled to the favelas on the hills above Rio, carrying heavy weapons. The picture of them fleeing was like a withdrawal of an army. Heavily armed police forces are now patrolling the streets of liberated favelas . On the other hand, heavily armed drug traffickers and their troops are now patrolling gang-controlled favelas, in expectation of more attacks.

The Brazilian police have trained a special unit, just for fights in the favelas. The operation from November 2010 is considered their best performance so far.  However, there are very few of those who believe that this country can keep fighting these criminals to the end.

Antonio Carlos Costa, director of Rio de Paz, anti-violence NGO, said that Rio needs more police officers that are better trained and better paid. "There is no way they can pacify all the communities. If you push the traffickers out of one area, they naturally just flow to another" – he said.

A growing number of people believe that Brazil needs to try a strategy of total isolation of favelas before the Olympic Games, rather than bring them in line. For example, in Alemao favela about 120,000 people live in ramshackle hovels, often with no electricity and no water, and they do not know of a different kind of life. Kids who are growing up there know that they have only two choices in life - to play football or to be criminals. If they don’t start playing for Barcelona, they will be playing with cocaine. And this cannot be corrected in 5 or less years.

In 2009, just two weeks after the announcement that Rio won the organization of Olympic Games, gangs knocked down a police helicopter. This caused a series of police raids in which about thirty people were killed. In August 2010, thirty-five people were imprisoned in a hotel with five stars – criminals from favela did this, while fleeing from the police. About sixty "to the teeth" armed criminals were returning from some party in the early hours. They were headed towards their ”base”, Rocinha, which is the biggest favela in Rio. The police spotted them and intercepted. Fifty of them managed to escape, but ten couldn’t so they rushed into an exclusive hotel and took hostages.

Jenson Button, famous Formula 1 driver experienced the spirit of favela on his own skin. When he was in Brazil for a race at Interlagos, he was attacked on the streets by armed bandits. He barely escaped alive.

Elza Santiago, a member of women’s cooperative that sells handcrafted goods to raise funds for education programs offered to women and children, thinks that everything will return the way it was when the Olympic Games are over. “Our people don’t have water. We’re walking up the hill to our favelas with water because we don’t have any. No one is talking about the Olympics, that is our Olympics.”

City of God

Favelas emerged in the late 19th century when the first black slaves were winning their freedom. Later, the favelas spread in several waves, especially as people from rural areas came to the city in search of a better life, and found only the misery of favelas. And once you enter a favela, it is hard to leave. Today, only in Rio there are more than a thousand favelas. There are mostly along the perimeter of the city, and in the case of Rio, that means surrounding hills.

Brazilian authorities have several times tried to implement some kind of slum urbanization (that is why some of favelas have stronger walls), but the spirit of favelas has proven to be indestructible. Drugs, crime and life on the street is the only thing the people who live there know. Some studies show that only 15 percent of the population in Rio’s favelas has expressed a desire to leave them.

Favelas, though not in a construction sense, follow the trends, so today 97 percent of homes have a television, 94 percent a refrigerator, and about 48 percent have a washing machine. About half of the people there have a mobile phone and 12 percent of homes have a computer.

Most accurate impression of favela is shown in the famous Brazilian film "City of God", about life in the favela of the same name - "Cidade de Deus". That film was often compared to Scorsese’s “GoodFellas”, but Scorsese’s movie begins with “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" and characters from the "City of God" had no choice.

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"Ecstasy" is not causing brain damage!

After serious research, medical experts from Harvard have come to this shocking discovery.  They have also criticized all previous studies on the subject of harmfulness of MDMA.

Most recent research that has shown that it is not true that "ecstasy" causes brain damage, like it was considered and substantiated with many studies a decade ago, has caused shock and concern. How to tell the public now that "ecstasy" is not bad, given that its use is widespread and that it is the cheapest drug? Will these results encourage more drug use, and will those who had doubts whether to try the "party pill" or not now be persuaded to do so?

Research that proves that the pill, without which rave can not be imagined, is not harmful, is one of the largest that studied consequences of taking MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, official title of this illegal substance) and was conducted by a team led by Professor John Halpern from Harvard Medical School. The results were published last week in a magazine "Addiction".

Experiments from Harvard have shown that cognitive abilities of "ecstasy" users are equal to those that are "clean”.  Until now, the consumption of "ecstasy" was associated with the damage of the central nervous system.  With his results, Halpern openly criticized the quality of all previous studies that linked this drug with the brain damage.

"Too many studies have been carried out on small populations, while overarching conclusions have been drawn from them" - Halpern said, adding that some previous researches did studied users of the rave culture, which includes all-night dancing, lack of sleep and fluids, and which are itself factors that contribute to the negative cognitive effects. But, it wasn’t taken into account that ecstasy users consume and other drugs and alcohol, which can affect cognition, or that some of them might have suffered disruption of intellectual skills before they started taking "ecstasy".

Halpern’s study took into account only those “ecstasy” users who weren’t taking any other drugs and who didn’t suffer any previous brain damage. In his experiment, 1,500 potential participants were reduced to 52 selected users whose cognitive abilities were equal to those of the 59 persons who do not use drugs. Even samples of hair were taken from the participants to find out if they were lying about drugs and alcohol.

"Essentially we compared one group of people who danced and raved and took ecstasy with a similar group of individuals who danced and raved but who did not take ecstasy. When we did that, we found that there was no difference in their cognitive abilities" – Halpern says.

Although the results of previous studies indicated that ecstasy causes memory loss and long-term consequences on behavior, some scientists, like English Professor David Nutt, who was fired as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for publicly stating that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than ecstasy, were not surprised with these results. "I always assumed that, when properly designed studies were carried out, we would find ecstasy does not cause brain damage," said Nutt.

However, Halpern did admit that the use of “ecstasy” has its risks. “Ecstasy consumption is dangerous:  illegally-made pills can contain harmful contaminants, there are no warning labels, there is no medical supervision, and in rare cases people are physically harmed and even die from overdosing. It is important for drug-abuse information to be accurate, and we hope our report will help upgrade public health messages.  But while we found no ominous, concerning risks to cognitive performance, that is quite different from concluding that ecstasy use is ‘risk-free’."

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