Flakka is starting to wreck havoc in several US cities. Source: Supplied
IT can make you sweaty, paranoid, and delusional — this is the horrific new drug that experts fear could hit Australian shores.
Flakka, also known as the “$5 insanity” and “gravel”, can be lethal and send users into a complete rage, shaking violently with an almost superhuman strength.
The so-called designer drug that has already made its presence felt in the United States, from Florida to Texas and Ohio, has not been recorded in Australia yet.
Several Australians researchers, spoken to by news.com.au had never heard of Flakka.
Doctors in emergency rooms abroad have already seen the ugly side of drugs but Sydney hospitals have not treated any Flakka victims they are aware of, although one specialist said the effects were so similar to other drugs it wouldn’t be immediately obvious.
But like other drugs that find their way to Australian shores, including the very similar bath salts, it may just be a matter of time before some seriously dirty side-effects pop up.
And with its low price, US authorities say it has the potential to be more dangerous than ice.
The Australian Federal Government this week formed a taskforce to develop a strategy to beat the ice epidemic, but drug pushers are creating new types of drugs like Flakka, faster than governments can keep up.
And while bath salts have already been linked with some brutal crimes the fear is Flakka users will follow the same path.
Flakka
Users are known to snort, smoke, inject, and swallow the drug.
Users become paranoid — even before a comedown — and often hallucinate. Most doses last three-to four hours.
And it’s making them crazy.
In the US a man was found breaking down the door of a police building.
In another incident an armed and naked man was found standing on his roof and yelling “I feel delusional, and I’m hallucinating,” while in another episode a man attacked an 86-year-old woman.
There was also a man who impaled himself through the groin on a fence.
Don Maines, a treatment counsellor who works with a Florida police force, told the Sun Sentinel just how dangerous Flakka was.
He said the concoction was so bad even hardened drug users were trying to avoid it.
This man was impaled on a fence he was trying to climb over while high on flakka. Source: Supplied
“Longtime addicts who have tried flakka, they’re terrified of it … This is as bad as it gets.”
It’s an “upper” which is supposed to give users feelings of euphoria, greater alertness and wakefulness. In that respect its effects are similar to those other drug users like ice or cocaine.
However, Flakka is new so exactly how it effects the brain — and how addictive it is — isn’t clear yet.
Jim Hall, an epidemiologist at the Center for Applied Research on Substance Use and Health Disparities at Nova Southeastern University said Flakka was already packing a punch
“We’re starting to see a rash of cases of a syndrome referred to as excited delirium,” Mr Hall told CBS Evening News.
James West was high on the drug flakka when he tried to kick in a door Source: Supplied
“This is where the body goes into hyperthermia, generally a temperature of 105 degrees. The individual becomes psychotic, they often rip off their clothes and run out into the street violently and have an adrenaline-like strength and police are called and it takes four or five officers to restrain them. Then once they are restrained, if they don’t receive immediate medical attention they can die.”
There has already been a 780 per cent increase in the number of reported cases in the last three years.
But police in the US fear that could just be the tip of the iceberg with the worst yet to come.
“On a scale of one to 10, Flakka is a 12,” Lt. Dan Zsido of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office told a Florida television channel about how bad the drug was.
Matthew Kenney was arrested in Florida after running naked through the streets under the grip of Flakka. Source: Supplied
“It comes from a place where we don’t know how it’s being made, who’s making it, and what’s been added to it before it reaches the end user, so it’s very dangerous.”
Last year the United Nation’s 2014 World Drug Report revealed Australians had one of the highest rates of illicit drug use in the world.
Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation president Dr Alex Wodak toldThe Daily Telegraph Australia’s burgeoning appetite for illicit drugs was fuelled by both a cashed-up and unfettered new generation and an underclass of Australians disadvantaged by growing social and economic inequality.
Australians lead the world in use of party drug ecstasy, third in methamphetamines and fourth in cocaine.
Originally published as ‘Scale of one to 10, Flakka is a 12’