Another danger to illicit drug users: Animal tranquilizer

CHESTER, Vt. — Brooke Goodwin came home one night last March after being out with friends. She had just turned 23 the day before, had a good job and was planning to go away with friends the following weekend. Her mother, whose bedroom is next door to the kitchen, heard her daughter get some food and go to bed.

But Brooke never came downstairs the next day. Her older sister found her in her room. She had overdosed on a toxic mix of the powerful opioid fentanyl cut with xylazine, an animal sedative that is making its way into the illicit drug supply, particularly in the Northeast.

Her death has “just ripped us to shreds,” said her mother, Deb Walker, who has four other children.

“I didn’t even know Brooke was using drugs. I know absolutely she did not know that that was in there,” she said.

According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this autumn, xylazine was involved in fatal drug overdoses in 23 states in 2019, with the highest rate — 67% — happening in the Northeast. The animal sedative used in veterinary medicine to sedate cows, horses, sheep and other animals is being added to other drugs, mostly fentanyl and heroin, as a cutting agent, officials said.

But unlike opioids, there’s no antidote like naloxone, also called Narcan, specific to a xylazine overdose.

The animal tranquilizer is also not a controlled substance and not approved for human use. When used in illicitly produced opioids, xylazine may increase the risk for fatal overdose, the CDC warns.

“If somebody’s overdosing on xylazine or on heroin cut with xylazine, that naloxone is not going to have much of an effect on the part of the overdose that’s driven by the xylazine,” said Dr. Scott Hadland, an addiction doctor and chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at the MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston.

Supportive measures can be used if a person is attended to early enough, such as resuscitation, getting them fluids and other sorts of hospital care, Hadland said. “But this is much more difficult to manage out in the community because it’s inevitably going to be an overdose that involves multiple substances including opioids,” he said.

While the rate of overdose deaths where xylazine was listed as a cause of death was low at 1.2%, the report states that the animal tranquilizer’s detection may be underestimated. That’s because routine post-death toxicology tests “might not have included tests for xylazine, and current testing protocols for xylazine are not standard.”

“It has been going on for a time but there’s also a lot of indications from local authorities that the problem is worsening, particularly here in the Northeast,” said Hadland.

One or more other drugs were also listed as the cause of the overdose deaths, including heroin and cocaine, with fentanyl being the most common, according to the CDC report.

“Fentanyl we know to be in the drug supply. We know it’s in the heroin supply, so often when you think you’re buying heroin, you’re in fact getting fentanyl. I think that’s what’s happening