Fentanyl must be amazing.
Loads of people give up on everything that makes life good for it.
Their loved ones, any other possessions or pursuits, homes, their dignity, and even their lives.
But actually, fentanyl is garbage heroin, inferior in every single way but one.
It's the perfect drug for dealers.
And while we hear a lot about how deadly fentanyl is, many people it kills are not even fentanyl addicts.
It's truly the dumbest drug to ruin your life for.
Let's learn what fentanyl does to you, what it feels like, and why it's so much lamer than heroin.
Pain and Pleasure Maybe the two most important forces that guide our survival are pain and pleasure.
Pain may be the most visceral physical experience a claw ripping your flesh, a bone cracking, rejection eating your soul.
Pain can be scary and unbearable.
It's the strongest signal our bodies have to make us avoid harm.
Pleasure is what makes life good because it feels, well, amazing.
Eating things that are sweet or high fat, having sex or opening another booster pack with your friends.
Anything that makes you feel pleasure makes you want to do it again.
These two opposing forces guide you through life.
Pain shouts, stop, this is bad.
Pleasure cheers, more, do that again.
But while they are opposites, they're also linked.
Sometimes our body needs to end pain and create pleasure at the same time.
After giving birth, pain gets toned down and the mother is showered in happy hormones so she can bond with the newborn child.
During an intense hunt, the hunter forgets the physical exhaustion and minor injuries.
Both are technically not great experiences, but need to be repeated for our survival.
And nature invented a powerful mechanism to achieve this.
The mighty opioid receptor.
It's like a keyhole on the neurons that control pain and pleasure.
If activated, it reduces pain and how much you care about pain and it creates pleasure and good feelings.
The details are complex and not relevant for this story.
What you need to know is that any molecule that can fit into an opioid receptor like a key is called an opioid.
Opioids are extremely powerful, so when your body uses natural opioids, like endorphins when you laugh, it releases only a tiny amount exactly where they're needed.
So the effects are mild and localized.
Your sprained ankle feels better.
A painful memory subsides.
You get a boost of happiness meeting an old friend.
And now we're getting to drugs.
Humans found opioids in nature like morphine and were quite taken by them.
They got refined into a whole family of drugs used in hospitals and to relieve patients that are in immense pain codeine oxycontin, vicodin and, of course, heroin and the worst of all, fentanyl.
Before we can explain why fentanyl is the most garbage drug, we need to do something fun.
Let's inject some heroin together.
Ready?
The supernova of pleasure.
Heroin rushes through your entire body and flips every opioid receptor it finds.
A rapid cascade of things happens everywhere all at once.
A symphony of intense sensations.
Every cell regulating pleasure is now high.
Without their control, floodgates of happy hormones open and fill you up top to bottom with pure bliss.
A cup of coffee, a nectar of joy.
This song you like, a celestial symphony, a cuddle, pure love from the center of the universe.
Wherever you felt pain before, from wounds or aching joints or menstrual cramps or loneliness or self-loathing, it's gone now. you are simply unable to feel pain or care about it anymore.
Like dimming the lights in a cozy room your brain's alert system is put to sleep and you feel at ease, warm and serene.
Any stress melts away and dissolves into a dreamlike haze.
You're no longer worried or tense about anything.
This peace even spreads to your essential organs, slowing your breath, soothing and slowing your intestines.
Your chest rises and falls like the gentle waves of a quiet shore.
You're sailing a sea of calm and happiness that feels perfect and eternal.
The full load of a strong opioid-like heroin for the very first time is one of the most amazing feelings humans can experience.
For a few hours, you're in heaven.
And this is exactly the problem.
Your brain is not equipped to handle anything like it.
You feel too good.
But nothing lasts forever and now you're in trouble.
You just experienced the best feeling you ever felt.
Your brain's reward center is completely fried and can't comprehend what happened.
If what you did felt this good, it has to be amazing for your survival and you should do it again.
Except you can never ever feel this good again.
This will be your peak life moment forever.
You may forever chase this feeling you had this very first time.
And now you're back in the regular world with your insecurities, where your knee hurts, regular tasting coffee and having to work hard for happy hormones.
Comparison is the thief of joy.
And now you have your life to compare to a supernova of bliss.
The indescribable feeling comes with a damage to your sense of life and self that may be irreparable.
And this is not even the worst.
Opioids are incredibly addictive and the addiction among the worst you can have.
The supernova of pain.
Once you've taken opioids a few times, your brain has had enough.
The cells controlling pain and pleasure are constantly high and drowsy, so it boosts them and makes them hyperactive.
This happens very fast, sometimes after a few days of use.
You've developed an opioid tolerance toning down all the nice effects you're doing the drugs to achieve.
To feel like before, you'll need way higher doses.
Now you're at a crossroads.
Quit and have your system go back to normal fairly quickly, or keep going and take more.
You take the wrong turn.
Over the next few weeks, your brain keeps pushing back and you keep taking more.
The effects are not quite what they were, but still mildly nice.
Until one day, you can't get opioids and realize your body is now your enemy.
Your systems are so hyperactive that they make you feel the opposite of what the drug was doing.
Welcome to withdrawal.
It all starts with a creeping unease.
Instead of being euphoric and happy, nothing feels good anymore.
Your coffee is tasteless, your favorite song lame, your loved ones distant.
A storm of negative emotions shatters your sea of calm.
Serenity is replaced by anxiety and angst, like something terrible is imminent.
Your worries, insecurities and all the fears you suppressed aren't just back, but amplified into an existential crisis.
You're so restless you can't sit still.
Your heart is beating too fast.
You shiver, sweat, hyperventilate.
Your pain circuits are now oversensitive, so your bones and muscles ache and hurt for no reason.
Old wounds, physical and mental, torture you.
You have belly cramps and diarrhea and have to vomit.
You're too agitated to rest.
A war inside your body that you can't escape.
And of course, there's the craving screaming for you to make it stop.
Your mind and body beg for a hit.
You can be in this state for up to two weeks or make it stop right away.
Okay, so why not just take heroin forever and feel amazing always?
The fun thing is that it doesn't work this way.
You get tolerant to the nice effects, like euphoria, faster than to the bad ones, like dangerously slow breathing.
So it turns from touching the love center of the universe to mostly drowsy numbness and relief from withdrawal.
Now you don't take opiates to get to heaven, but to avoid hell.
You're in a prison of your mind and body, unable to connect with all the things that could actually make you feel good.
Opioid addiction is brutal and extremely hard to escape.
It should be pretty clear that you need to be extremely careful with any opioids, and if you have the chance to do it for fun, just don't.
There's a very real risk that your life might just be over, and that you'll go through hell.
Now that we've seen the heaven and hell of heroin, we can get to fentanyl, the garbage drug.
Fentanyl is really garbage heroin.
Everything we just described is true in different intensities for most opioids.
They can be great, all of them can be hell.
Heroin is just sort of the strongest, except it isn't.
Fentanyl is around 50 times more potent than heroin, but that doesn't mean 50 times more amazing.
Quite the opposite.
Fentanyl is extremely good at crossing the blood-brain barrier, the firewall that protects your brain from harmful substances.
It enters your brain so easily that you get from zero to extremely high almost instantly.
But just as fast as it enters, it leaves again.
A heroin high can last six hours.
One from fentanyl can fade in minutes.
Fentanyl doesn't feel as good as heroin.
Instead of a supernova of bliss, you mostly get the black hole of nodding away.
But it comes with all the withdrawal symptoms.
As a bonus, because fentanyl acts so quickly on your brain, it fries your reward center even more, making it even more addictive than heroin.
And since you only need so little of it, it's super easy to overdose and die by accident.
It's the deadliest illegal drug in US history by far.
Between 2013 and 2023, it killed about 400,000 Americans.
Fentanyl really is garbage heroin.
Too dangerous, too intense, too addictive, too little fun.
But then why are so many people taking it?
Well, actually, nobody wants to.
Fentanyl is not for users, it's for dealers.
The house always wins.
Fentanyl is a drug dealer's dream.
One truckload could supply the entire US for one year.
It's cheap to make and easy to smuggle.
Heroin needs plants and fields and way more space.
So garbage fentanyl just took over the heroin supply.
It might have seemed great for heroin addicts at first, and then its traps snapped closed.
While some people may seek out fentanyl specifically, several studies have found that most opioid users try to avoid it.
Even worse, a lot of people who die from fentanyl don't take it willingly.
Dealers want people to come back for their product, and by adding a tiny trace of fentanyl to any drug, they can make it more addictive.
Even if people don't realize they took an opioid, they'll feel its effects.
So dealers started to mix all kinds of drugs with fentanyl, turning the entire US drug market into a minefield where any trip can be your last, because way too often they put a bit too much in their mixes.
In 2022, the combination with pills, often counterfeit oxycodone and benzodiazepines accounted for about 20 of all fentanyl deaths.
In 2023, the US authorities seized 115 million pills with fentanyl.
70% contained a lethal dose.
About half of fentanyl overdoses came where you expected the least from stimulants like cocaine and meth.
A lot of people may have taken these mixes on purpose, but many others just wanted to party and weren't ready for an opioid surprise.
This is especially dangerous because if you've never tried opioids, you can overdose very easily.
Fentanyl really has no upsides outside medical use.
For dealers and cartels, it means easy profit.
For users, it means a worse opioid addiction and a worse life.
For people who would never ever try it, it can be a death sentence they didn't see coming.
No matter how alluring they are.
Using opioids, even in safe settings, is playing with fire on the best of days.
Fentanyl is a garbage drug that turns this fire into a raging furnace, increasing the risk of death massively.
There's really only one conclusion to draw here.
If you have the choice, don't step into the supernova of pleasure.
Because the danger of it turning into a supernova of pain is just too high.
Getting to the root of an issue requires looking at all sides and thinking critically about the information we consume.
In today's world, this can be difficult.
This is why Ground News is such an important tool today.
We believe in their mission and are proud to have them sponsor this video.
In a nutshell, the app and website combine the world's news in one place so we can do just that.
Take the reporting on a US bill about harder punishments for fentanyl smugglers.
Fewer than 75 sources worldwide reported on the story, but the headlines were quite different.
You can follow along by scanning the QR code on screen.
Some of them were critical and compared the policy to the war on drugs in the 1970s.
Other sources praised the step and said it could end the crisis.
And some media outlets asked if the smugglers are really the problem and if policymakers shouldn't focus on the problem of demand in the US itself.
The interesting thing is that no government-funded sources are covering the topic.
Reading the news this way lets you compare different sides and the context of a story in one place, so you can analyze the information for yourself.
You get a sense of different perspectives and can hold yourself accountable to avoid information bubbles and confirmation bias.
That's actually what drew us and our founder Philip to GroundMuse in the first place.
Go to ground.news.kin or scan the QR code to check it out.
Our link saves you 40% off their unlimited Access Advantage subscription.
Just like us, Ground News is funded through their subscribers.
By subscribing to them, you're accessing context that is now more important than ever, and you're also directly supporting our channel.
Sign up through this QR code or our link below to get the tools to think for yourself.
If you also want to support us, come join our Patreon flock.
In return, you'll receive perks like your own Kurzgesagt book, exclusive behind-the-scenes insights into our work or sneak peeks of our next topics.
Become a patron, become a part of Kurzgesagt and help us provide trustworthy science content on the internet.
