Elijah Rising
Elijah Rising
Exposing the Tactics of Control in Drug-Fueled Human Trafficking - w/ Recovery Specialist Jessica Gobble - Ep. 74
What new drug trends are we seeing and why are they so concerning?
This is the second episode in our series with Jessica Gobble, Elijah Rising’s Recovery Specialist. In this episode, Jessica goes over the most popular types of drugs right now and why they are so dangerous, specifically to young people.
In this episode, Jessica sheds light on:
- The persistent surge of fentanyl and its devastating impact.
- The largest resurgence of stimulants since the 1980's.
- Why so many deadly drugs are currently legal.
Uncover the intricate web of addiction and trafficking, where profit margins drive the exploitation of vulnerable individuals.
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Welcome to the Elijah Rising podcast. I'm your host, maika Gamboa, and today I have a very special guest. Her name is Jessica Gobble. She is Elijah Rising's recovery specialist. She's a lived experience expert and just incredibly knowledgeable, full of the spirit, and we are going to get such a treat. This is actually episode two in a series that we're doing around drug trends and addiction and recovery in the anti-trafficking space. So if you haven't listened to episode one, you can go back one podcast and listen to that one. I highly recommend it, but we're excited to have you back, jessica.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being here today. Thanks, micah, I'm glad to be here, so we are just going to jump right in, okay. Okay, we have so much content to cover. You are like this wealth and repository of knowledge, and so I want to give you all the time that you need. But you know we've been talking a little bit about why do we even focus on addiction and recovery? Aren't we doing like anti-trafficking, right, and so and we've been talking a little bit you explained so beautifully in episode one of like why those two worlds are merged, how there's so much overlap, rather. But so let's talk about what you're seeing trending things that have changed, maybe even in the last couple of years, we've seen a lot of new developments in the recovery space. Can you talk to us a little bit about, like, what drug trends are you seeing? What do people out there who are in this field, what do they need to know, be mindful of and be watching for?
Speaker 2:Sure, and I really feel like everyone needs to know this. So parents need to know this. People who are would consider themselves recreational drug users. I think it's important for everyone to know and obviously in the anti-trafficking movement I think we need to really be on top of this. So one of the things that's recent is that there's a stimulant resurgence. It's sort of like a pendulum swing, no-transcript. So stimulant use has become really popular the most popular it's been since the 1980s when crack was brand new. So it's huge right now.
Speaker 2:And I think there was this misconception by people using drugs that if we use stimulants we'll be safe from fentanyl. The problem is that stimulants are cut with fentanyl. It's like everything is cut with fentanyl. Now it's in everything. Can I just ask you, why is that? Yeah, so if you think about it from a marketing perspective, if you are a dealer and you have an opportunity to make money off of two products by giving someone one product that contains another product that they will become physically dependent on, then it makes sense from a marketing perspective. So also, fentanyl is super cheap, so people put it into drugs to enhance the effect of the drugs, and so if someone thinks they're smoking crack, they don't even realize that they're actually getting fentanyl. It's going to give them an enhanced high, it's going to be cheaper for the person producing the crack and they're going to end up with a customer who now wants fentanyl and crack. Okay, I totally derailed you.
Speaker 1:I apologize. You were talking about stimulants. Okay, sorry.
Speaker 2:That's really helpful though to know.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. And then there is a trend of ketamine use. Ketamine has become famous recently because Matthew Perry died because of ketamine use and ketamine is used by some professionals in therapeutic ways and that is not what Matthew Perry died from. Matthew Perry had been using ketamine in ketamine therapy, but that's under the guidance of a medical professional. What is a trend is especially among young drug users, is skin-popping ketamine, which is using a needle in the skin, not intravenously, and that's kind of become trendy and it's weird. It's become even more trend, like there's more demand since Matthew Perry's death.
Speaker 1:So there's something kind of cryptic about that.
Speaker 2:The big thing that's worrisome to almost everyone that I talk to in the addiction profession is xylosine. Xylosine, which is sometimes called the zombie drug, is not illegal in a lot of states Texas is one of them.
Speaker 2:It is a veterinary medicine and it is used to cut and enhance drugs, and in most states it's in the entire supply. So everything that was cut with fentanyl is now being also cut with xylosine, and part of the reason that that's scary is that xylosine does not respond to Narcan. So if someone is overdosing and they're given Narcan or Naloxone, it is not going to stop the effects of xylosine on them. Now if you were to see someone overdosing, you still should administer Narcan, because a lot of times it's cut with both fentanyl and xylosine and the Narcan will help with the fentanyl. But in addition to that it causes skin infections. It causes ulcers in the skin that can turn into um like gangrene type infections people are dying, wow, from the infections.
Speaker 2:And it's not at the site of injection, so it's not like just for people who are using it and they're getting an infection from their drug use. It has that effect on the body so that you might get a drug user, might get a sore anywhere, which puts them at additional risk for other infections right so it's just horrible, horrible.
Speaker 2:Um, there's also a trend of saraquil you be used, being misused. Saraquil is a mental health medication. It's normally prescribed for um, let me think I just went blank bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and there's been a lot more of it prescribed since the pandemic. A lot of young people have had mental health issues. So there's more Seroquel out there because it's been prescribed so frequently. And I've read that the trend is that young people are taking the Seroquel and normally it would put them to sleep, it would calm them down and put them to sleep and they're trying to stay awake past the point that they would fall asleep or feel the calm, and so they can kind of feel a buzz by overusing it. There's also a new thing called gas station heroin.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've heard about this.
Speaker 2:It was in the news yesterday. Like yesterday I just saw that there was a big multi-state recall. It's legal. They sell it at gas stations. The drug is actually called Tyaneptine and it's marketed under lots of brands, but the one that there's a recall for is called Neptune and it's in a lot of gas stations. But there have been multiple states that have made it illegal. And now yesterday there's a huge recall because there have been all kinds of medical problems people ending up in the ICU, intubated, as a result of taking this substance that they're buying at gas stations that are just over the counter.
Speaker 2:So, and it's physically addictive. So you have a physical withdrawal similar to heroin, which is why they're calling it gas station heroin. Wow, so this is wild.
Speaker 1:It just feels like that we are in this kind of free-for-all, like tailspin, I don't know, with like in the substance space, like that drugs and correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not super familiar, but it feels like they're getting more pernicious, more deadly, more ubiquitous even, for sure, more ubiquitous even, and very subtle ways that these people who are creating the drugs are really subverting or capitalizing on the market For sure, one of the things that I've noticed is that, as the stimulants resurgence happened, I noticed that there were all these legal things.
Speaker 2:Like I said, xylosine is not illegal in some states, so there's this new move to try and take the fear that people naturally have of some of these drugs away by saying that it's legal, and I think that that started with the legalization of marijuana in a lot of states, and there was this narrative that if it's legal, it must be fine. Yeah, it's safe and it's not addictive and it's not harmful. There are recent studies, that actually recent findings. It's not even a study. The studies have been done.
Speaker 2:The recent findings have been published. It's been added to the DSM-5 that THC, which is the ingredient in marijuana, is recognized as causing mental health issues. There's a huge amount of material that supports this evidence that it causes psychosis in a great number of people who use THC, and part of it is that the THC is so strong that they're using that it's causing negative effects on their mental health. It's causing this pot induced psychosis and now they're recognizing that it's also addictive.
Speaker 1:So after so many states have already legalized it.
Speaker 2:Oh wait a minute, hang on.
Speaker 1:So, after so many states have already legalized it, yes, oh, wait a minute. Yes, hang on. There are other yeah, you know indicators that we weren't really like, aware of or weren't watching for. Yes, that's very concerning yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:I saw that the governor of california is one of the governors who is wanting to make xylosing xylosing illegal. So even though it's not illegal in all states, I thought, okay, well, maybe they're recognizing that this can be a problem and they want to nip it in the bud.
Speaker 1:And so that we've we've seen like let's just take fentanyl, for example you know that the death toll has climbed over the years, or even over the months, right Like becoming more and more as people use it more, becoming more ubiquitous, like we've seen the, the fallout be larger. So I imagine that even with some of these other drugs that may be over the counter or maybe legal, that we could potentially have that same situation on our hands yeah, um, that's one of the reasons I think they've acted so quickly to make this tyanopene, tyaneptine be recalled so quickly.
Speaker 2:Sure Is that they're on top of this Because they're recognizing that some of these drugs are poison. Fentanyl is being called poison Right now. People are being prosecuted for poisoning people when they overdose on fentanyl. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin. Wow, a hundred times stronger than morphine. So if you think about that, it makes sense that it would be considered poisonous, right? It's just crazy.
Speaker 1:That's wild. Can you talk to us a little bit about like? We hear a lot in the news about fentanyl right, I'm so glad that you're bringing to the table, though there's like, okay, but there's a little, let's zoom out. You know there's another. We're talking about a buffet of options for drug use that are all concerning, really deadly, very concerning, that we need to be aware of, especially when we're doing shelter work. Right, because we're coming, we're serving a population that either typically has a drug use history or maybe they've had a forced drug use history. I mean, they're coming to us with something, right? So let's just talk about fentanyl, for example. Can you talk to us about? Because I think that's like a buzzword. We hear it so much, you know it's been so popularized. Why is it so dangerous? Why is it so concerning?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the potency is the main thing. Historically, when someone had a drug problem and you wanted to get help for someone, we would talk about people needing to hit a bottom. People who care about them might wait until things get bad enough so that they can use that as an opportunity to offer them help. The problem with fentanyl is that there's this whole just don't die movement. People can die so quickly on fentanyl the first time they use it, and it's not the people that would typically be thought of as who will die from a drug overdose. Sure, because there are now pressed pills. It's so commonly pressed in pills that look almost exactly like they're so good at this.
Speaker 1:They take the form of another drug.
Speaker 2:Yes, so people a college student may think that they're getting Adderall. They call or they respond to an ad online or message someone online to get an Adderall so that they can stay up all night and study. And they end up dying that night because it's been pressed with fentanyl, because fentanyl is so cheap and again fentanyl is going to make the effects be more felt of whatever it's mixed with right and it's so cheap, so the dealers are using it rather than having to use more expensive substances, and they're cutting everything with it.
Speaker 2:Um, I talked about this last time I was on a podcast with you guys. Fentanyl is the number one cause of death. Fentanyl overdose is the number one cause of death of 18 to 45-year-olds. So last time I was here, on this podcast, the death rate was 64,000. That year, 64,000 18 to 45-year-olds died from fentanyl overdoses. Last year that number went up to over 112,000.
Speaker 1:My gosh, it's almost double. I know Wow.
Speaker 2:So from 64,000 to 112,000. And I said I had read an article that was talking about these young people dying deaths of despair and that fentanyl was such a sad drug and you know that they're not having an opportunity to outgrow this sort of traditional recreational drug use stage because fentanyl is so deadly and that the amount of deaths were equal to taking up an airplane and filling it with college students every day of the year and crashing it.
Speaker 1:And that was when it was at 64,000.
Speaker 2:So now here we are over 112,000, and that's in 2023. And that's just fentanyl overdose. That's not other drug overdoses. That's crazy. And that's not talking about the damage done when someone overdoses and doesn't die, but they have problems from oxygen deprivation to the brain or but of those. That's 306 deaths per day of 18 to 45 year olds last year.
Speaker 1:That is like filling two airplanes now two every single day of the year and crashing them that's wild, it's crazy and the reason just to bring it kind of back home, because you know, within the anti-trafficking space, when you're talking 18 and 45 year olds, I mean that is the demographic that we're serving. I mean, by and large right, at least for Elijah Rising. You know, our safe home we serve adult women who are in the home and that's, yeah, 18 and up and we, we see, typically they don't go over a 45 year old age age range. Um, so that's like literally the demographic that we're going after, that we're serving, that we're trying to reach, pull out. I mean that is just tragic it is.
Speaker 2:I will say that something that I've noticed in the resurgence of stimulants is that traffickers do not want to lose their investment Sure, so they do not as much as they can or as much as they're willing to make an effort. They do not want to lose the people they're trafficking. So that is part of the reason that stimulants have become more so popular and prevalent with traffickers. And although stimulants are cut with fentanyl, it's not the same thing as just giving someone fentanyl Like straight yeah straight fentanyl Right.
Speaker 2:So, although there are traffickers who will want their, the women that they're, or the people that they're trafficking, to be completely incapacitated yeah, that's true, so they might. And then there's an additional risk, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:My goodness Okay. So last question you know, we know we're seeing that we're the market is changing right. Even since COVID, I would say you know we've seen a dramatic shift in just this whole idea of how drugs are being moved and sold and buying and what types and all of that. So can you talk to us a little bit? I have heard this very briefly recently, I don't know much about it what they call like an open air drug market. Sure, what is that and why should we be concerned?
Speaker 2:Okay. So open air drug markets sort of gotten a lot of press recently. It's actually not a new thing. What that means is an area where drug dealers know they can sell drugs and drug buyers know they can buy drugs somewhere out in the open. So, if you think about it, there have been like notorious areas of big cities like San Francisco, tenderloin, where this has existed for years and years go. Tenderloin, where this has existed for years and years.
Speaker 2:What's new is that, because of the pandemic, bars and clubs and places where people would traditionally recreational drug what people would call themselves recreational drug users who didn't have a regular dealer would normally be able to go and find someone there selling drugs. Those places shut down right, so they had to find a new way to sell drugs. So open air drug markets started to pop up in areas where they wouldn't normally be in different cities. And now there are areas in different cities where and part of why that's a concern for us is in those open air drug markets the person who is actually handing out the drugs is very often someone who's being trafficked.
Speaker 1:So can you go further into that. Can you explain? That that is just fascinating and tragic. Yeah, it is. It's really sad.
Speaker 2:So very often someone is in a position of vulnerability because they have an addiction, and so a dealer will say I will give you what you need. I will give you drugs. If you will stand here and be the person who is the face selling the drugs which puts them at, they're then having all of the risk of the criminal act absolutely being persecuted. I'm not persecuted, prosecuted, and it removes the risk to a great deal for the actual dealer, the actual trafficker or the dealer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they also use them to run drugs and deliver drugs, right. So something else that happened during the pandemic is people started getting them more online you know messaging Sure and so they will use them to be drug runners, and they're going to be the ones that are caught with the drugs, right, and that's just another layer of vulnerability, exploitation, and we see we've seen this in our home.
Speaker 1:I mean that's like, okay, you got busted for, you know, drugs or prostitution or something like that, but that's not the underlying, that's not actually what's going on behind the scenes, right? So it's not always as cut and dry as you see people on the news or whatever you know or yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:That's not always the full picture, and I see these traffickers, pimps, whatever you want to call them like really hiding behind multiple layers, which are people, individuals, who are bearing the brunt, bearing the burden, receiving the punishment that's really not due them, you know?
Speaker 2:wow, it's really sad and with the crackdown on fentanyl because it's been in the press so much they are in many states having really severe penalties. So someone who is delivering one pill yeah that contains fentanyl now could end up with a very long-term sentence right for delivering poison, especially if the person dies and it could be someone who is being trafficked yeah, who, who's being forced to do that, and that's, oh my goodness. Yeah, and very often young people, really young people.
Speaker 1:Gosh, and then that's their whole life in front of them, wow, so that's why you know that kind of I won't go into this today but that the complexities and the vulnerabilities around this population, the women that we're serving, I mean we're talking about not only have we we've touched on, okay, sex trafficking, forced fraud, coercion, physical abuse, verbal abuse, right, but now we're talking about a forced addiction, now we're talking about criminality. I mean there are so many layers to this of what a safe home really needs to kind of know and be prepared to go in with services for this population. You know it's so complex, it is um. Well, is there anything else, as we wrap up, that we haven't touched on today? Um, around kind of what the drug trends are, what we're seeing, that we haven't touched on? That you would like our listeners to know.
Speaker 2:I just I really always want to encourage people, like find out about this, because if someone is starting in this life, the sooner they can get help the better. So just like with trafficking, if you see something, say something. I think the same is true If you have a friend or family member who is acting different or something is just telling you something's off or not right, especially with the potency of the drugs that are around now. Do not wait until you don't have to wait until they hit a bottom.
Speaker 1:Gets bad. Yeah, that's really good advice. That's really really good advice. Jessica, this was so amazing to hear kind of your perspective and your knowledge. You have such a wealth of information. So at the next episode, our third and final episode, we are going to be talking more specifically about how we touch on addiction recovery within the Safe Home Program. So I can't wait to touch on that. If you have enjoyed this episode episode, please like, subscribe, share, spread the word. We need people to. We want people to be recovered and to be these risks to be mitigated in their lives, so we would love for you guys to do that. We appreciate y'all listening and, jessica, thank you so much for joining us today.