There are multiple medications often times mixed with fentanyl that are showing up across the United States.
Xylazine (known by the street name Tranq) is a central nervous system depressant that can cause drowsiness, amnesia, and slow breathing, heart rate, and life threatening hypotension. This is also the drug suspected in the majority of the “zombie overdoses” in some major cities. It can last up to eight hours.
Medetomidine is a known primarily veterinarian medication and related to but up to 200 times as potent as xylazine. It is a CNS depressant that can cause sedation, analgesia, muscle relaxation, anxiolysis, often with marked bradycardia sometimes into the 20’s, hypotension, hyperglycemia, and hallucinations. It has been linked to multiple overdoses in East Coast cities in 2024 but has been in the US since at least 2022. Medetomidine is faster acting and more effective than dexmedetomidine.
Neither drug is responsive to naloxone.
