Fentanyl Fun

There was a guy at the gym tonight wearing cut-offs. Honest to christ cut-off jean shorts. I'm sure you know what's coming next, but I might as well say it. He also had a mustache. I started to wonder if I had mistakenly wandered onto the set of a porno instead of going to the gym like I normally do.

I heard about an unfortunate event at another pharmacy in a town not far from me in the Corpopharm grapevine the other day. A little background before I get to the point.

Fentanyl patches are a medication used to treat chronic pain conditions. Fentanyl is an opiate analgesic related to morphine. You put the patch on your body, and it delivers the medication slowly and steadily through your skin and eventually into your bloodstream. It's an effective way to relieve pain in people with varieties of maladies from cancer to nerve pain, but doesn't come without risks.

One of these risks is the potential for abuse. These patches are stolen from hospice patients and scavenged from garbage cans because they still contain a quantity of drug even after they have been used by the patient for therapeutic reasons. The remaining drug can be extracted by a variety of means and used for illicit purposes.

A Corpopharm in a neighboring town dispensed a months supply of these fentanyl patches to a woman a few weeks ago. After picking them up, she proceeded directly to the bathroom within the Corpopharm store. She locked herself in a stall, withdrew the fentanyl gel from one of her patches, and injected it directly into her arm. The amount of drug she gave herself was equivalent to a 3 days supply, all at once. A Corpopharm employee found her dead an hour later.

Next time you decide to try something new to get high, you might consider consulting with your pharmacist first.