Fentanyl, 50 times more lethal than heroin
50 times more potent than heroin, more toxic, with deeper and more addictive effects and, sadly cheaper, Fentanyl is the drug in fashion in the United States and which is now beginning to invade Europe as well. In the last ten years, the use of Fentanyl has increased exponentially causing a 90% increase in the number of deaths in three years. In 2021 alone over 70,000 in the US. A deadly poison that is often combined with methadone, heroin or alcohol, which increases addiction and subsequently death. Fentanyl is certainly not a new product. It was born, as a synthetic product, in 1960 from the work of the Belgian doctor and researcher Paul Janssen, and has been used since 1963 as an intravenous analgesic. Then from the 70s the areas of use grew. It is registered in the family of opiates (natural or synthetic), and is one of the strongest painkillers we have available.
Fentanyl, from a useful product to a lethal product for many young people
Unfortunately, despite this undisputed usefulness in medicine, the black market for synthetic opioids has grown rapidly in recent years, becoming a lethal trend for many young people. The properties of these narcotics are very similar to heroin and morphine with the only difference being that they are much more toxic and highly addictive. Another negative aspect is that they are cheaper to produce and therefore to sell and this exponentially increases the risk of overdose. How does this opiate work in the body? The pleasurable or strengthening effect produced by Fentanyl depends on the mesolimbic dopamine system, the pathways used by the neurotransmitter dopamine to distribute itself in the brain. However, after continued consumption, the first neuroadaptations begin to occur involving the dorsal striatum, a region involved in habit formation. If consumption is stopped, a negative emotional state appears which initiates the stress circuit. Then the release of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine increases, the amygdala is activated, and levels of corticotropin-releasing factor, a hormone also related to emotional stress, increase.
Fentanyl, a drug you can’t get rid of
This vortex of reactions causes symptoms related to the activation of the autonomic nervous system, whose function is to regulate the activity of the internal organs – heart, liver, reproductive organs, sweat glands – to adapt to the demands of the environment. They are the tremors, sweating, vomiting or tachycardia with which the withdrawal syndrome manifests itself when the drug is stopped. Furthermore, the emergence of the desire to obtain and consume the substance is related to neuroadaptations in the cerebral cortex, hippocampus and amygdala, which intensify the desire before the signals associated with use. All of these transformations foster addiction, a chronic disease. As a result, stopping Fentanyl is becoming increasingly difficult as the body has made the need for the drug to function. Unfortunately, the diffusion has not remained only in America but is also growing in Europe. For example, in Spain, almost 16% of the population aged 15-64 admitted to having taken opioid analgesics with or without a prescription. Among them, the consumption of Fentanyl among them increased from 3.6% in 2020 to 14% in 2022. Numbers that are worrying.
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