I want to put a word of caution here at the start, because there ARE supposedly such things as ‘Zombie drugs’, at least in some interpretations of the Haitian Voodoo Zombification process.

The potential existence of ACTUAL drugs involved with turning a person into a Zombie of some form only makes the following abuse of the language worse:

zombie drug krokodil-turns people into zombies

This highly addictive drug causes peoples skin to rot and start falling off. It has become an epidemic in russia. It seems like it must be fake, but it is real. Some people thing is is the beginning of a zombie Apocalypse.

There are some graphic pictures at the site linked above, so be aware.

Now, what is this ‘krokodil’ drug? A little googling reveals that krokodil is the name for a cheap street version of desomorphine, a synthetic derivative of morphine that actually has some real and legitimate medical potential.. when you don’t cook it up in a kitchen from iodine and codeine:

Desomorphine (Dihydrodesoxymorphine, Permonid) is an opiate analogue invented in 1932 in the United States that is a derivative of morphine, where the 6-hydroxyl group has been removed and the 7,8 double bond has been saturated.[1] It has sedative and analgesic effects, and is around 8-10 times more potent than morphine.

…

Desomorphine attracted attention in 2010 in Russia due to an upsurge in clandestine production, presumably due to its relatively simple synthesis from codeine.[8] The drug is easily made from codeine, iodine and red phosphorus,[9] in a similar process to the manufacture of methamphetamine from pseudoephedrine, but desomorphine made this way is highly impure and contaminated with various toxic and corrosive byproducts.

The problem, and supposedly ‘zombie’ like appearance, comes from injecting this actually CORROSIVE substance into a vein; it basically melts your skin off, slowly.

Hence, ‘krokodil’, as in scaly. Very, very scaly.

Eww.

But why go to all the effort of attempting to smear Zombies by implying that they are, in fact, akin to drug addicts slowly killing themselves with Russkie meth? After all, the users and observers of this drug don’t call it ‘Zombie’ anything, it already has a street name.

I suspect prejudice. Prejudice and yet another case of Don’t Use the Zed Word.

For shame, internet. For shame.

Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Euro-zom, Journamalism

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, October 3rd, 2011 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.