During the mid 1950’s William Burroughs wrote to Allen Ginsberg from Tangier, Morrocco regarding his experiences with liquid oxycodone. Sold over the counter in the International Zone under the German brand name Eukodol, he described at length spending extended periods of time locked away in his room, only moving to inject himself every two hours. He seemed to believe that the drug itself reflected a certain side of the German national character: “Trust the Germans to come up with some real evil shit.” One can only imagine how he would have tied Krokodil to the nihilistic post Soviet national mentality.
Krokodil, a true hillbilly cook up of desomorphine, first made the scene in far eastern Siberia in 2002. Thusly named for the greeensish/yellow scaly skin condition users attain in short order, its been rightly noted as a Burroughs nightmare fantasy come to life.
The former Soviet empire is an unbelievably vast space where isolation, crushing poverty and desperation seems to be the rule. Russia is a country where in the inhabitants are caught between Putin, Medvedev and the Oligarchs on one side and the Russian crime bosses on the other, and it’s plutocrat take all. The vast remainder of the population is left to escape by the avenues available to them…whether it be vodka or heroin. Mother Russia currently hold to her bosom a full two million heroin addicts, the largest number in the world. She also accounts for a full third of the world’s heroin deaths per year at around 30,000. How on earth does one keep up that habit, far from the ports and trade routes, where the heroin supply is unreliable and expensive? When it comes to the dope game, anyone who has spent time in Oklahoma will tell you that isolation can be the true mother of invention. The poor got to cooking.
Desomorphine was first synthesized in the United States in the early 30’s. Like so many derivatives of this type, fentanyl, hydromorphone, heroin itself, the result was a compound several times more powerful than the parent morphine. Desomorphine was briefly marketed by the Swiss concern Roche under the brand name Permonid, but was quickly abandoned. Due to a significantly shorter half life than its opioid cousins and sharp increases in addiction rates, desomorphine spent decades as nothing more than a notation in the books, a compound with no medicinal value.
Enterprising Russians found that by using codeine tablets easily obtained at pharmacies over the counter and cooking with a mixture of iodine, red phosphorous gasoline and hydrochloric acid they could get a crude desomorphine at approximately 3x less the cost of heroin: Krokodil. All this cheap dope independent of the dealers came with it’s own price. High concentrations of iodine disrupt the endocrine system, causing muscular disorders. Concentrations of heavy metals such as iron, zinc, lead and antimony attack the nervous system and lead to inflammation and shut down of the liver and kidneys; the phosphorous destroys bone tissue. The smallest miss of the vein on an injection site will lead to abscess and with the destruction of circulation comes the gangrene. The user will begin to rot. And the kick…oh my the kick…heroin withdrawal lasts at most a week, usually closer to three days, psychological effects aside. A Krokodil kick lasts upwards of a month which includes convulsions and unbearable pain, in which the sufferer will have to be heavily sedated to simply have a chance of escaping madness from the horror of it all. Despite what the movies may show, no one is going through that on a heroin detox. This all happens in very short order. Someone on Krokodil gets a year, maybe two.
"I remember one day, we cooked for three days straight.You don’t sleep much when you’re on krokodil, as you need to wake up every couple of hours for another hit. At the time we were cooking it at our place, and loads of people came round and pitched in. For three days we just kept on making it. By the end, we all staggered out yellow, exhausted and stinking of iodine."
"It’s that smell of iodine that infuses all their clothes. There’s no way to wash it out, all you can do is burn the clothes. Any flat that has been used as a krokodil cooking house is best forgotten about as a place to live. You’ll never get that smell out of the flat."
Давайте приготовления пищи
- any pills containing codeine
- dry akali. can be found in hard surface cleaners.
- gasoline or lighter fluid
- 2 plastic bottles. preferably 1.5 liter and 0.5 liter
- crystalline iodine
- red phosphorous, obtained from match heads
- 30% hydrochloric acid or electrolyte
1-Codeine + SOCl2 —> α-Chlorocodide + HCl + SO2
2-α-Chlorocodide + I2 —> 7,8 diiodo α-Chlorocodide
3-7,8 diiodo α-Chlorocodide + HI —-> desomorphine
“To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.”
- 01-Wu Lyf // Spitting Blood
- 02-Goblin // Suspiria Narration
- 03-Brigitte Fontaine // Maman Jai Peur
- 04-Chateau Marmont // Nibiru
- 05-The Electric Flag // Peters Trip
- 06-The Electric Flag // Joint Passing
- 07-White Hills // The Condition Of Nothing
- 08-La Otracina // We Ride On
- 09-Caroline // Swimmer
- 10-Franco Battiato // Mutation
14 Comments
Literally, fuck everything about this shit. Krokodil, not the post.
how long did it take you before you started putting in some thought on how to do a cook?
As a ‘professional drug user’ myself (drug addict to some) I can sympathise with people on Desomorphine (Krok).
Before condemning me as crazy, read on:
If u are a non-user of drugs (excluding hospital/prescription drugs etc – used at physician stated doses only) then unless you are broadminded and open to leaning about a ‘new world’ it is pointless you reading my comment.
Everybody has a choice when it comes to taking drugs,
But not everybody has the same life – and that isn’t through choice.
OH.. Im going to attempt to submit this little post before writing anymore incase its one of those sites that ask a million questions before letting your comment be seen. TBC..
Sam.
i live in canada and recently some introveinous drug users in ontario admitted to social workers that they tried krok. it’s awful. i hope no kids that i know will ever start. i know some would, though. i can understand, but just knowing now that ill rot alive and that the kick lasts a month is enough to stop me…
ya me too …never will even try some dumb shit like that …everyone likes to get high … but to lose a leg too .lol and an arm .f**k that
Soooo I think I have figured out the whole Zombie Apocalypse thing and how it is going to start.If you don’t know what Iam talking about use google for details as the pictures are far too gross for me to post here. Either one of 2 things will happen and it will happen either here or in Russia. My first therory is that a Bath Salts Junkie will visit Russia and get the Krocodil junkies hooked on bath Salts. Theory number 2 involves the drug Krocodil coming to the USA and meeting Bath Salts junkies. Instant Zombie Apocalypse in the making, Krocodil is known to eat the flesh and leave exposed bone! Imagine if these two drugs were ever mixed?
it’d be the ultimate speedball
Seriously, if you’re thinking about testing this, just use Cyanide instead.. it’s quicker, cheaper, and a hell of a lot less painful, judging by the pictures you can find around the ‘net..
Heaven help those poor souls. Take the recipe down please.
I DO mean remove the recipe.
you are ordering me to take it down due to some light detail on the desomprphine cook process?
Look lady, if threats from a South American death cult (http://thecargoculte.com/archives/18) that hunted children couldn’t get me to alter my posts you sure as hell won’t.
Man these guys should have stuck with joints…
nice one on the recipe.. hope to try soon. thx.
could u fix me with more detail?
As I study to become pastor, I read the bible and try to understand the world around me. I know things are bad n the world, and I know people want to escape, even for a while. I can only sort of know because I was a white punk on dope and had no real problems in comparison with people around the world today.
In my time, I was a freebase addict, and I thought that was evil, but I stopped using it by the grace of GOD, and before my health was permanently affected.
What I have seen on the Internet about this krokodil affects me greatly. I am so small and impotent to take on things this large. I have the Holy Spirit as my ally, and I have no doubt I can reach some people.
I can only hope that there is a punishment appropriate to the crime of having invented this drug and let the “receipe” loose in the world. From what I know of the grace of GOD, even the stupid people that are responsible for starting this crazy phenomenon can repent and be born again. But what of the people locked into a path of suffering that will experience the terrible reality of krokodil?
Here in America we think mere shootings are evil, but I can see no comparison. I have never imagined anything this bad. To think it is really happening is sobering in the extreme. My mind reels are the thought of how bad things would have to be to make this seem better.