By Bulletin Staff
Medical researchers have called on government authorities to step up public education efforts in the wake of a growing number of drug users turning into the undead after ingesting opioids contaminated with so-called “zombie bath salts.”
Authors of the article in the Annals of Zombie Medicine (AZM) write that heroin, fentanyl and other opioids are turning up on the street mixed with lab-produced stimulants that have been linked with zombification.
The stimulants fall into a class of chemicals called synthetic cathinones, which are more commonly known as “bath salts.” While synthetic cathinones have some medical uses to treat specific conditions, they are also ingested by drug users for the sense of euphoria or alertness they impart.
Scientists have known that certain formulations of synthetic cathinones can have zombifying effects since at least the 2012 Miami face-eating attack that has been linked to the use of bath salts. Zombie bath salts are known on the street by a variety of names, including Brainz, Pure Dead, Zombz and Zom-Zom.
The AZM article reports that drug cartels are using synthetic cathinones to enhance the narcotic effect of common illicit opioids and that zombie bath salts increasingly are finding their way into the new drug combinations, resulting in a growing number of drug users turning into the undead.
The authors attribute the zombie bath salts contamination to poor quality controls in the illegal drug labs rather than any intent on the part of the cartels to turn their customers into the living dead.
“The manufacturing process for synthetic cathinones is widely understood and fairly straightforward, but the process presents several opportunities for corruption. When that occurs, it can result in a derivative that turns the user into a bloodthirsty rampaging zombie,” the authors write.
According to the paper, incidents of drug users ingesting, inhaling or injecting the zombifying opioids have been reported in 48 states (only Utah and Hawaii have been spared), and the total number of such incidents has increased from less than a dozen in 2014 to more than 3,500 in 2022.
Dustin Mills, a professor of zombie medicine at Clintweiler University in New York City, who is not affiliated with the article, observed that the Big Apple has seen a spike in illicit-opioid users becoming zombies since 2020.
“On the streets they call it ‘going zeke.’ A user goes looking for a normal opioid experience but instead gets their brain fried, and the next thing you know they’re on the hunt for someone else’s brains to eat,” Mills said. “It’s the worst kind of bad trip.”
The article’s authors point out that the scale of the zombie bath salts crisis currently pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of drug users dying annually in the US due to the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
But they also note the widescale public education efforts around the dangers of fentanyl, including the public and private messaging around naloxone, a medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reverse opioid overdose.
“Fentanyl continues to be a major threat to drug users in the US. But while the public is increasingly aware of fentanyl’s dangers, and we now have a potential antidote for fentanyl overdose in the form of naloxone, the public remains largely unaware of the dangers of opioids contaminated with zombie bath salts, and certainly no antidote to zombification yet exists,” the article states.
The authors suggest that, at least in part, state and federal agencies are to blame for the lack of public awareness of the hazards of zombie bath salts. They note that following the 2012 Miami incidents, authorities denied that zombie bath salts were to blame in order to avoid public panic. The real cause of the incident only came out later following a Miami Herald investigation.
The dangers of this health threat were also highlighted in the 2013 documentary Bath Salt Zombies.
The authors write that the Office of National Drug Control Policy has responded to the growing threat of opioids contaminated with the animal tranquilizer xylazine by issuing a national response plan earlier this year, and they call for a similar plan to address the dangers of zombie bath salts.
The article is “Bath Salts of the Damned: A Public Health Wake-Up Call” in the latest issue of Annals of Zombie Medicine. Lead author on the article is Dr. Amelia Rodriguez, with co-authors Dr. Jonathan Carter and Dr. Benjamin Walker.
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