Five people in the U.S. have been hospitalized with symptoms related to a flesh-eating drug fresh from Russia called Krokadil.
The drug is like a homemade heroin, it is made with codeine, gasoline, and a number of other chemicals. The deadly drug made its way too America after taking Russia by storm, it most likely gained popularity because it is much cheaper than the real stuff and fairly easy to make, Time reported.
The drug often causes gangrenous skin conditions only days after use. Late last month the first two U.S. cases were reported in Arizona.
Now, three more cases of "crocodile skin" have been reported in Chicago, CBS News reported. One of the patients is a 25-year-old woman who used heroin for 10 years, but only started using krokadil a month ago. The woman is now in critical condition at the local St. Joseph's Hospital.
"[It was] terrible. When she came in, she had the destruction that occurs because of this drug, over 70 percent of her lower body," Doctor Abhin Singla, an internist and addiction specialist, told CBS.
"It's very frightening. It almost immediately starts to destroy blood cells and blood vessels, literally causes gangrene from the inside of the body coming out," Singla said.
Singla said he immediately detected the smell of rotting flesh when one of the krokadil patients entered the hospital, the Daily Mail reported.
"If you want to kill yourself, this is the way to do it," he said.
"When drug users do it repeatedly, the skin sloughs. It causes hardening of their skin. It will cause necrosis," explained Dr Frank LoVecchio, who treated the first two krokadil patients.
A Time investigation found Russian krokadil users only lived for an average of two or three years after they start using the drug. Krokadil is known for its "zombie-like" effect on users' skin, but it can also damage motor skills and the ability to speak.
"She'll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something. So we try to be gentle with her," Andrei Yatsenko, house manager at a drug rehab center in Russia's Chichevo, told Time, speaking of a recovering krokodil addict.
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