Fentanyl Addiction Information & Resources

Originally, fentanyl was a powerful prescription drug, often used during surgeries.¹ It was mostly employed in medical facilities as an intravenous drug. It was also prescribed to patients as a patch that released the drug slowly through the skin, and as a slow-dissolving lozenge.

All that has changed. The fentanyl found on the illicit market could be one of the dozens of fentanyl analogues—chemically similar drugs. They are all more powerful and potent than heroin and most of the supply is illicitly manufactured outside the U.S.

These types of fentanyl may be found in medical use or on the illicit market:²

• 3-methylfentanyl
• sufentanil
• remifentanil
• furanylfentanyl
• isobutyrfentanil
• carfentanil

Plain, basic fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. Carfentanil is so powerful that it is only approved in the U.S. for large animal use. It is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine.²

Fentanyl Begins Killing Americans

For many years, the only fentanyl involved in drug overdoses could be traced to small quantities of the drug that were stolen from medical facilities. Then, in the years 2005 to 2007, illicitly manufactured fentanyl hit the American market, killing more than a thousand people before the fentanyl pipeline was shut down.³

Overdose deaths stayed low for several more years, and then fentanyl manufactured in illicit labs overseas began to be trafficked into the U.S. in quantity. In the next few years, fentanyl took the number one position among drugs causing fatal overdoses. Every year, tens of thousands of Americans lose their lives to this drug.

This drug can now be found contaminating the supplies of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. Drug dealers also buy pill presses and colorants and make their own counterfeit pills that may contain a fatal dose of fentanyl. Counterfeit pills that look like Vicodin or OxyContin, stimulants like Adderall or central nervous system depressants like Xanax have been found to contain fentanyl.

Effects of Fentanyl

Fentanyl causes the same effects as other opioids, but far more powerfully:

• Euphoria
• Respiratory depression
• Sedation
• Confusion
• Drowsiness
• Nausea
• Vomiting

Respiratory depression is the effect that causes death when there is an overdose. With the basic formula of fentanyl, a two-milligram dose is enough to kill a person who has not built up a tolerance to opioids.⁴ That could include anyone who is unlucky enough to obtain one of these counterfeit prescription pills for the first time.