It’s easy to categorize addicted drug users: “He uses heroin,” or “she uses crack.” But those labels don’t apply anymore. That’s because there are almost no pure drugs out there. Almost everything is a mélange of random shit — uppers, downers, cough medicine, horse tranquilizers, and everything in between.
Yesterday I met with Sarah Riley, director of the lab that does the postmortem toxicology testing for St. Louis. She gave me a tour of the lab (which is awesome), let me take photos of the drug samples, and discussed trends she’s seeing in the chemicals they analyze.
Thankfully, xylazine — the veterinary tranquilizer that causes disgusting open wounds — has been decreasing in the area, but novel benzodiazepines (basically, knock-off Xanax) are rising. And fentanyl remains in just about everything.
One distressing trend…