There's a new deadly opiate that is destroying addicts in Ukraine and Russia...and has moved over to the States too.
It effectively turns people into zombies. There are all those horror movies about a virus turning people into rotting creatures, but it turns out that it's a drug that you can make at home.
Photographer Emanuele Satolli went to Yekaterinburg three times, the fourth largest city in Russia, to document people using a drug called desomorphine, also known as krokodil. What he captured is truly shocking.
Credit: Emanuele Satolli
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After authorities cracked down on heroin suppliers in Russia, addicts had to make their own homemade version. Krokodil is made from over-the-counter drugs like headache tablets such as codeine and cooked.
Credit: Emanuele Satolli
But it has terrible side effects. It's cut with paint thinners and phosphorous which makes users' skin scaly - like a crocodile, which is why it's called 'krokodil'. The skin rots around where it's injected - so it looks like it's a flesh eating virus...or that you're becoming a virus.
Credit: Emanuele Satolli
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Apparently you can even smell the flesh being eaten away!
Rotting sores, abscesses... if that's not bad enough, flesh goes grey and peels off the skin. It's something out of a horror movie. If you miss a vein and hit flesh instead, you'll get a sore and it will begin to rot. People literally rot to death and become skeletons.
Credit: Emanuele Satolli
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It kills you pretty quickly - after dosing yourself with krokodil, your life expectancy is shortened to two years after you start injecting. Thousands of people are dying across Eastern Europe and Russia. Heroin kills about 30,000 people every year in Russia, but krokodil is slowly getting more popular.
On his third trip back to Ykaterinburg, Emanuele only found three survivors of the drug.
Credit: Emanuele Satolli
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The problem is that it's so cheap - whereas heroin costs £20-£60 per dose, krokodil can be made for £2 from headache tablets. It's also more addictive. With heroin, withdrawal can last up to 10 days - but with krokodil it's a month, a very painful month and people can't manage to break the cycle.
Credit: Emanuele Satolli
But a hit from krokodil only lasts two hours - whereas on heroin can last a lot longer than that. So effectively addicts need more and more krokodil to get their kicks. Grim. Very grim.
Featured Image Credit: Emanuele Satolli