As a boy, Nathan Clark of Philadelphia feared that he would lose his limbs and be unable to fish and crab with his grandfather. Today, he is a triple amputee. He lost his limbs after using fentanyl and xylazine, an animal tranquilizer also known as “tranq” that rots flesh and bone. Less than five years after xylazine appeared in his dope bag, the 29-year-old can’t bathe or use the toilet on his own. “When they cut my legs off, the bone was black,” Clark said. The rise of xylazine in the illicit drug supply is creating a generation of permanently disabled amputees. Hospitals in Philadelphia, a hot spot for xylazine contamination, are overwhelmed with patients requiring costly care. Three-quarters of residents at Beacon House, an emergency shelter in the Kensington neighborhood, have crippling wounds or amputations resulting from xylazine wounds.
Their disfigurement is an extreme manifestation of the suffering illicit drugs are causing to chronic users. For more of them, recovering from addiction means living with permanent disabilities. The worst cases are the growing number of people with maimed or amputated limbs. Xylazine is spreading as dealers buy it from China and Puerto Rico to mix into fentanyl and other drugs. Xylazine was detected in about 40% of urine samples from Pennsylvania that contained fentanyl in the year through April, says drug-testing company Millennium Health. In New England, Xylazine’s presence doubled to 28% of samples in April from six months earlier., reports the Wall Street Journal. Beacon House is housing dozens of people disabled by xylazine among its 69 residents. The building keeps 15 walkers for people too compromised to navigate the building on their own. “Xylazine in a short amount of time is changing the scope of the opioid crisis,” said Dale Tippett of Prevention Point, the nonprofit running Beacon House. “It is eliminating people’s ability to stand up again.”