Contugesic

THE CONTUGESIC NIGHTMARE - By Bill Landis

Contugesic is a Euro version of a very old and strange narcotic.  Its popularity among Americans is on the upswing via the current wave of e-commerce merchants of imported drugs.  It is one of the most dangerous drugs currently on the market, a concentrated bathtub gin version of morphine in a continuous release form.

To fully comprehend contugesic, one must take a look at its creaky turn of the century roots.  The narcotic in contugesic is dihydrocodeine, a semisynthentic morphine derivative invented in America around 1900.  Dihydrocodeine was a pre-Harrison narcotics act remedy that could be casually sold over the counter with your groceries, a product of a far distant American culture.

Dihydrocodeine was intended for pain from upper respiratory infections, headaches, neuralgia, dental work, and generalized moderate pain.  Medical books describe its effects as being similar to codeine, which is an underestimation.  These academic sources equate 60mg of dihydrocodeine to 120mg of codeine (as much as two Tylenol (paracematol) with codeine #4 tablets).  More sinisterly, it has been suggested that dihydrocodeine is codeine cubed, not that it’s double the strength of codeine, but codeine multiplied by itself.  A basic rule of thumb would place 60mg of dihydrocodeine as equipotent to 10mg of morphine.

There are several theories surrounding dihydrocodeine.  One suggests that dihydrocodeine was a precursor to the invention of hydrocodone, which was synthesized originally as an antitussive in the 1920s.  Not used generally used in Europe, hydrocodone in combination with acetaminophen (paracematol) is the narcotic ingredient in American opiod painkillers with brand names like norco, lortab, lorcet and vicodin.  These pills currently top American prescription sales, with millions of units moving per year.  Hydrocodone is supposedly six times stronger than codeine, but is more intensely felt, and hydrocodone is equipotent to morphine.  Dihydrocodeine has been synthesized into hydrocodone in lab experiments.  Hydrocodone is also generally not sold in Europe, while dihydrocodeine is often prescribed for similar symptoms.  While the drugs are cross-tolerant, they are very distinct entities.

Although invented in America, dihydrocodeine remains overshadowed in the States by painkillers containing oxycodone, hydrocodone and codeine.  Dihydrocodeine appears in rarely prescribed compounds known as Synalgos-DC and Panlor-SS.  Synalgos-DC combines 16mg of dihydrocodeine aspirin and caffeine; Panlor-SS combines 32mg of the narcotic with acetaminophen (paracematol) and caffeine.  Occasionally, these dihydrocodeine compounds are prescribed for minor dental work and pain.  However, there is a steady demand for dihydrocodeine in America that importers of European versions of the drug are meeting in variants on the drug that are more concentrated, intense and unpredictable than the domestic brands.

Dihydrocodeine has retained popularity in the United Kingdom and Europe for a variety of applications.  It’s prescribed in the UK for moderately severe pain and is also used to detox heroin and methadone addicts.  It’s given in an immediate release 30mg form called DF-118.  British detox centers consider dihydrocodeine to be 10% the strength of methadone, i.e. 60mg of dihydrocodeine would equal 6mg of methadone or a capful of a patient’s take-home bottle. 

A Welsh detoxification program called TEDS puts junkies on a two week home dropdown schedule, moving from 180mg per day to a mere 30mg on days thirteen and fourteen.  At that point they start cracking, crave a bag of dope and need lots of support.  Generally, the withdrawal experience is so uncomfortable and frightening that many of these Welsh addicts later turn into pot smokers who finish off evenings with a glass of wine and a few joints.  They’re not considered complete successes in being drug free, but are better off than they had been as junkies, and many are petrified of going near narcotics again.

Nicky, who runs this Brown Addict site, had a long heroin addiction.  Nicky has now gotten clean.  She’s had the naltrexone implant, in which a narcotic antagonist has been surgically put in her body and prevents her from feeling any high from an opiate.  In her previous efforts to quit heroin Nicky endured an inpatient DF-118 detox that lasted a week.  Her intake of dihydrocodeine was lowered from a whopping 480mg on the first day (a deadly dose for opiate intolerant individuals) ending on the seventh day with 30mg. 

Nicky has listed dihydrocodeine in the DF-118 format as one of the detox methods available discussed in her Brown Addict site.  She knowingly pointed out dihydrocodeine’s unique traits.  “You have to cut your opiate use right down before you start as it is a medium strength opiate.     It can cause bad constipation.  It can increase the hot/cold flushes.  You can't take it once a day and feel OK all the time.  You have to take it four times a day as it is short-acting.  You may have times when you are feeling rough and times when you’re feeling intoxicated. The psychological withdrawals and cravings can be worse because it can feel better to take a short-acting drug.”

“A heroin detox with dihydrocodeine is similar to methadone but the physical withdrawal symptoms may be less severe and not last quite as long.  However, the fact that dihydrocodeine feels more like heroin means that it can make the cravings to use heroin worse than if you are detoxing on methadone.  It can be more psychologically addictive than methadone because it gives more of a rush.”

Dihydrocodeine in its lethal form of contugesic has found a dedicated following among affluent Americans who order their drugs online.  The majority of these individuals rely on USA based internet drugstores for their regular intake.  These folks like to experiment and supplement their medicine cabinets with products from foreign offshore drugstores, known in net parlance as international ops.  International ops range from legitimate European pharmaceutical companies to blatant outlaws operating through e-mails to potential customers.  Contugesic moves in America through an electronic grapevine effect among users and sellers.

The name contugesic is an anagram for “continuous release analgesic.”  Contugesic is a time-release format of dihydrocodeine created for dosing at twelve-hour intervals instead of four.  The pills have a wax-like base to facilitate their time release and cannot be crushed up for snorting or cooked up and injected.  Any attempt to abuse this drug in such a manner will not work and can result in horrible physical accidents or death.

Contugesic comes in 60mg, 90mg and 120mg sizes.  It is also known as didor continus, codicontin, and, among its addicts simply as “DHC.”    Although the 90mg and 120mg pills sometimes make it here, the most commonly seen format in the States is the 60mg size, a small oblong white pill with the very faint imprint of “DHC 60.”    Each 60mg contugesic tablet is equal to two of the DF-118 30mg dihydrocodeine tablets that Nicky described, but they are in an ergot freebase and are time released.  Meaning, instead of dosing at four-hour intervals, as is the case with DF-118, contugesic is designed to be dosed twice a day at twelve hour intervals.

European prescribing guidelines place contugesic a step under morphine.  The 120mg size is given twice a day to cancer patients.  Doses exceeding 240mg per day edge towards lethal. At lower strengths like 60mg, contugesic is used as a cold medicine to relieve the hacking cough and breathlessness from the flu or bronchitis. 

Though contugesic is a prescription drug in certain parts of the European Union, and is a highly controlled substance in the UK, the 60mg size is amazingly sold over the counter in Mexico, Spain, Gibraltar, Andorra and Austria.  It comes in blister packs of 20 tablets or boxes of 60.

Americans addicted to domestic pharmaceuticals like hydrocodone or codeine with paracematol shop online for medications.  They frequent drug buyer and pharmacy watch message boards, where the effects of contugesic and the sources to purchase it are discussed.  It’s one drug where the supply is smaller than the demand, and people have a plethora of reactions to it.

Several kinds of Americans gravitate towards contugesic.  One group has legitimate physical problems or postoperative pain that they had controlled with demerol (pethidine), but had difficulty continuing to obtain prescriptions for such a potent and regulated narcotic.  These folks react to contugesic much the same as they reacted to demerol.  In their situation and physicality, contugesic induces a nap that blankets their pain flare-up.  Some swear that the drug is as powerful as highly controlled narcotic combinations like hydrocodone or oxycodone. 

A large chunk of stateside contugesic users are heavily addicted to hydrocodone products.  Often you’ll find middle-aged women who use contugesic for its cross-tolerant quality for their “hydro holidays”; i.e. when they are short of or out of their narcotic of choice.  Some of them use contugesic to supplement their daily intake and claim they feel either “nothing” from the drug or describe it as “speedy codeine.”  They chew the pills for a more dramatic and short-lived effect, but are usually so heavily addicted to narcotics that they misjudge exactly how serious a narcotic contugesic is.

A conservative bunch seeking to keep their tolerance low and under control may swallow one or two contugesics with their hydrocodone early in the day.  They feel the continuous release action of the contugesic affords them pain relief for up to ten hours, enhancing and prolonging the effect of the hydrocodone.

There are a reckless few who use more than most.  One heavy user of contugesic was Del*, a new millennium version of the 1950s businessman who took amphetamines to get started and barbiturates with a highball to come down in the evening.  Del runs an electronic business that invented one of the most popular children’s learning games.  Del chews three to four contugesic 60mg pills with his morning coffee as a mood elevator, which is a large amount of dihydrocodeine to suddenly ingest.  He follows this up with the stimulant ritalin.  “The contugesic really takes the edge off the rit.”  Del then adds the anti-depressant effexor to his pharmaceutical cocktail, and finishes his evening off with the tranquilizer klonopin (rivitrol) over vodka.    Del feels that, “three contugesics (180mg of dihydrocodeine) have the same effect as 15mg of hydrocodone,” but, as he would learn the hard way, is actually a much stronger and insidious drug.

One over the top hedonist took five contugesics at once shortly after waking and felt their effects all day.  Unless you have a big tolerance for narcotics this is in the danger zone.  You don’t want to be OD’ing from some peculiar foreign drug which a local hospital has little or no experience with.  Never forget that contugesic possession presents sticky legal issues in the States, hence all the secrecy surrounding its use.  The only legitimate way of obtaining it is to bring back a quantity for personal use from a trip abroad. 

Other people have had completely negative reactions to contugesic and swear they would never purchase it again.  Mike*, who normally takes hydrocodone and the benzodiazapine antipanic tranquilizer xanax (alprazolam), got conned into trying contugesic after hearing it was just like “speedy codeine” or “a milder vicodin.”  “I had serious body rushes from it and had to go outside for air.  Suddenly there was no wick left to my temper. Within minutes, I was screaming at a neighbor who got on my nerves.  I’ll never touch the stuff again.”

A growing number of hardcore heroin addicts who switched their focus to more commonly obtainable prescription narcotics have become attached to contugesic, and then found themselves embroiled in a nightmare of addiction.  Brad* has used gear (heroin), and various opiod pharmaceuticals for over 20 years, including dilaudid, morphine, codeine, oxycodone and hydrocodone.  He’s the type of guy who will take an excessive amount of tablets above the prescribing guidelines to reproduce the sensation of getting loaded on gear. 

Brad heard of contugesic through drug message boards where he was garnering information about how to purchase his current narcotic of choice – hydrocodone – domestically. There were also benzodiazapine tranquilizers like diazepam, alprazolam, temmies (restoril), and the occasional mild barbiturate like fioricet in his pharmaceutical stew. He was intrigued by the fact that some users had replaced hydrocodone with contugesic and liked it better. 

Brad took note of the various international ops that sold contugesic.  The first company he was aware of was Lisbol, run by a British man named Denis Faulkner.  Faulkner would even include a “safety warning” about contugesic that was a mockery of the United States’ Food and Drug Administration drug warnings.  Faulkner mailed his products from Spain, and the lack of return address on his envelopes proved to be a red flag for Spanish authorities, and they later arrested him.

The most overground company Brad encountered on the net was Europecare, better known by its web address as pharma24.cc.  They sell contugesic 60mg along with a plethora of other narcotic painkillers, cough medicines, and tranquilizers unavailable stateside.  Europecare charges about 38,70 Euros (about $40) for a box of sixty contugesics, plus a $15 shipping fee. This is a reasonable price, considering that some offshore drugstores want up to $200 per box of contugesic.  The negative feedback about Europecare is that they took 3-6 weeks to deliver, and their merchandise was sent in a noisy, obvious package by registered mail that virtually screams out to customs inspectors.  Some of Europecare’s customers had been lucky while others have had packages seized by America’s Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA.  The risk of legal trouble or identity/credit card theft, as you have to fax a xerox of your card and driver’s license to Europecare’s Gibraltar office put Brad off.

Brad then encountered two underground international ops that have built up solid customer bases by offering contugesic.  One was Arish V., who operates by circulating an e-mailed price list with his paypal account to those who stumble upon him in the murky world of drug buyer websites.  Arish was actually a dirty young Asian man (what we call Indo-Pak in the States) living in London who puts up pathetic personal ads on lewd Yahoo singles sites.  Arish’s obsession with looking for love in all the wrong places both drives and funds his business.  There are reports that Arish has ripped off several of the aforementioned American women who supplement their diet of hydrocodone with contugesic.  This was enough make Arish suspect in Brad’s eyes.  Plus Brad thought Arish’s demands for western union or paypal and a “shipping fee” would create a suspicious paper trail.

The person who everyone on the drug message boards seems to have encountered and centers his business around contugesic is the Biotran Company, formerly known as Biomagic.  Emanating out of Birmingham, England, Biotran was frequently discussed among drug buyers, and had a crude website with a racing form theme, with a pyramidal scheme involving incremental purchases and a “free” sample to start you off.  Biotran even boldly listed a phone number on its website for a time.  Initially, he seemed like the most harmless and discreet of the ops.  Little did Brad think that Biotran would be the most deadly; how could you go wrong with a sample of ten pills sent to you?

Biotran is run by another Asian with the Anglicized name of Wayne, who likely owns the mail drop in Birmingham where the envelopes of money for drugs are sent.  He started off his business with pm’s to people cruising drug websites.  Biotran’s popularity mushroomed through word of mouth.  He even initially fished out customers in the UK by selling hairloss medication, although he later dropped it from his product line.  Other things that he has later dropped have been the Spanish version of the muscle relaxant Soma, Mio Relax; the sleeping pill Sonata; and Aldonto, a time release Tramadol (Ultram), a dangerous painkiller with narcotic antagonist properties which has been linked to seizures.

Biotran’s business revolves now revolves around contugesic, certain European codeine products like 50mg perduratas codeine (time release if swallowed, immediate release if chewed), and 30mg instant release codeine.  Biotran also sells the popular sleeping pill ambien, which is known as stilnox in Europe, along with common antidepressants.  Wayne will not sell narcotics within the European Union, and targets stateside customers.  He demands his customers pay him in US dollars and eschews methods like paypal to avoid any paper trail back to him.

There was once an odd rumor that both Arish and Wayne were using the same IP address of Biotran.  However, their styles are completely different.  Arish writes in fairly proper English.  Wayne’s e-mails are phonetic messes that partly reveal his excessive contugesic use, and partly make plain that English is not his first, or possibly even his second, language.  Perhaps they were partners many moons ago, but their styles are different, to the acceptance of cash vs. paper trail, to their speech, to their packaging.  Bioman has a particular discreet style which displays a knowledge of shipping. Arish was filling zip lock baggies of pills out of their blister packs and used a phony return address.

Part of the appeal of Biotran was that it operates on a system that’s like a floating casino where he sets the limits on the bets. In the manner of many dope dealers, the first turn-on is “free.”  He sends a free sample of the medication of your choice.  If it agrees with you, you send him $5 for 20 more.  Then you pay $10 for 20 pills; $20 for 40; $40 for 60; and then the full $60 for 60.  Since he fronted you the sample, it’s a COD system where the customer always “owes” him for a shipment. 

Initially, Biotran said that he had too many customers for contugesic for Brad to “enter the pool,” and, on top of that, the drug was only seasonally available around fall/winter.  So Brad originally sent for perduratas codeine and was surprised when he received a small, discreet envelope with no return address.  The blister pack of small green speckled pills was wrapped with double edged tape within a white sheet of paper.  The codeine was much stronger than the stateside variety, and without any additives like aspirin or paracematol.

At this time Brad was sinking into a heavy roll.  On top of his consumption of large amounts of hydrocodone and sedatives, he added the perduratas codeine.  He was taking four to five of Biotran’s pills early in the morning (about 250mg of codeine) and having morphine like nods from them.  He was anxious to try this contugesic, which was supposedly even stronger.

Brad’s drug problems were engulfing him.  By chance, he happened on the Brown Addict site.  For once it wasn’t judgmental.  It spelled out the warning signs if you were a serious addict, gave techniques to stay alive and healthy, and finally offered some doors out.  There were even practical suggestions about detoxification techniques.  It was humanistic, accessible, intuitive, and pragmatic.  Nicky’s testament to getting better gave real credence to that it would be possible to clean up. 

Reading the site, Brad realized he had all the traits of a junkie; he had just substituted different opiates for gear.  He was acting dangerously loaded and out of control.  At one point his wife took his young child and left him for several days, which was a shock – and something suggested on the Brown Addict site for the spouse of an addict to do for personal safety.  This woke Brad up to the to just how impossible he had been to stay around.

When contugesic finally became available, Brad’s family had returned and he was determined to taper himself off opiates using it.  Brad’s initial reaction to contugesic was that it was “like a mimic of heroin, a mock up of it with some overtones of and similar effects as methadone.”  First he felt he was “stabilizing” like a methadone patient and stuck to two to three of the 60mg contugesic tablets a day.  At times he felt like he alone held the cure for all heroin and hard opiod addicts in America.  “I was delusional,” recalls Brad.

However, contugesic had disconcerting side effects.  Brad experimented by taking one pill for its time-release quality, and chewing another for immediate release.  The side effect resembled a form of temporary insanity.  “It was very similar to the heroin-cocaine speedballs I had done on the Lower East Side when I first got hooked.  The ‘cocaine’ was these $5-10 bags that had speed and mystery ingredients; it felt euphoric but you were out of your skull for quite a time after injecting one.  The sensation of chewing contugesic for immediate release was very, very similar.  Very stimulating, very overwhelming, and I thought if I just got over the hump of this ‘weird’ feeling when the drug came on, I’d be able to drop down off the opiate use.”

“I’ve always loved opiates, and that bitter taste hits from chewing the contugesic tablet.  A huge rush accompanied by great excitability, with body rushes, flushing and sweating.   There was a definite euphoric feeling, plus a feeling of being extremely alert and awake.  There was less itching than with other opiates, though my pupils became extremely constricted, mimicking the pinned eyed look from heroin.  These sensations were very pronounced for about six hours and persisted past eight hours. 

“My wife had a bad reaction to the contugesic I offered her and didn’t want me ordering it again.  She doesn’t have my problem and takes medicine as prescribed.  She immediately felt the drug was toxic.  I should have listened.  Later, I learned she took out a life insurance policy on me because she was certain the contugesic would be the last straw.”

“I found myself needing one or two contugesics the minute I woke up early in the morning just to get straight.  Then I’d take another one or two about eight hours later.  The joke was on me.  My tolerance to it kept increasing.

“Wayne, who ran Biotran, seemed to know how addictive contugesic was, and kept pushing me to purchase a large amount of it at once.  He offered to sell 120 or 200 pills.  I thought it was risky both to send so much money through the mail, and likewise get all these tablets through customs, so I told him I’d keep leaving orders at 60 tablets. The DEA doesn’t seem particularly concerned about amounts in the personal use range that are obviously not a re-sale quantity, but is known to send a seizure notice or “love letter” for larger supplies, and no one needs that trouble.  He also raised the price from a dollar a tablet to $1.25, or $75 for blister packs of 60.

“Wayne had always been an impenetrable, moody character but I was very supportive of him on message boards and the like.  At one point he was insecure about how the University of Pennsylvania had named him as one of the top five sources to obtain narcotics on the internet.  I pointed out to him all the good comments from customers he received, as well as a story called Go E-Mail the Doctor that mentioned him favorably and gave him a nickname that would be recognizable only to those in the know.  He apparently used a great deal of contugesic himself.  And he was a walking collection of ticks and side effects from the drug, displaying everything from obsessive-compulsive disorder to violent mood swings.

 “No one knew how the medicine falls in Wayne’s hands, which kept me constantly guessing.  One possibility is that it is job related.  He could work in a storage facility where he has a light way with his fingers.  However, he claimed to me that he was going to Spain and Andorra and buying this drug over the counter.  There were holes in Wayne’s story.  How many times can some Asian go into a Farmacia complaining of a bad cold?  It was obvious he was getting it from a storage facility in Spain.  His envelopes were often mailed from Barcelona.”

“At first I believed contugesic would be my permanent drug of choice – as long as I could obtain it.  There was always the risk of a package getting stolen or seized … or Wayne just not being there anymore one day.  But I just couldn’t stop.  And I felt trapped about asking for help.  I lived most of my life in New York City and spent my younger years in Times Square, which is like Piccadilly.  After 9-11 we had moved away to a small, and what I discovered, was an intolerant community.  There was no one to turn to.  I went to an NA meeting and people talked about shopping sprees.  There was no fuckin’ way I could explain to them I was on this strange foreign drug – they weren’t scientifically minded and would have no idea of how to detox from it.  I sensed at this time I was hooked on something serious and had no idea of what the withdrawal symptoms would be like, so people in N/A who tell you ‘just flush it’ could be doing more damage than they imagine when the addiction has already turned into a medical condition.  And to make my paranoia worse, it’s so narrow minded here that acknowledging if you have a drug problem is practically an admission of guilt and makes you suspect.

“Thank God, I was able to get in touch with Nicky from Brown Addict.  She wasn’t initially familiar with contugesic, but I knew from her writing about dihydrocodeine in the DF-118 format.  So at least I thought she had a grasp of the subject.  Plus I am a gear lifer, so it was easy to relate.  She initially wasn’t familiar with the contugesic format, but was considerate enough to do some digging and protect my anonymity.

Nicky told Brad that, “I have detoxed off dihydrocodeine a few times and, yes, it is horrible like detoxing off gear. There is no easy way to come off anything, especially tablets like this.  Trying to get more info off the web for people who are reducing is VERY hard as all I keep getting is sites trying to sell me the drug, not offer help to get off it!

 “I would recommend a slow seven day reduction if you have enough tablets.  If not you will have to do faster. Even though it will be uncomfortable, remember that it will be more so if you continue to use the same amount until you run out, as then you will have to go cold turkey.”

Nicky thoughtfully asked about Brad’s problem on a medical message board and got some pragmatic advice from an American woman, who explained that “contugesic is not readily available in North America, hence the lack of info on it. It is basically 2 to 2-1/2 times stronger than codeine. Pills should not be halved as they are timed release. Decrease usage slowly, maybe one whole pill in the morning and another whole pill in the evening. Gradually wait longer to take it in the morning and eliminate the evening pill. Once on one pill a day, then withdrawal symptoms should be minimal when stopping completely.”

Brad followed this advice and tapered down.  He immediately caught bronchitis and got a time-released hydrocodone cough medicine, tussionex, along with antibiotics.  Unfortunately, another shipment of contugesic arrived right after he was better.

“I started acting like a fiend with the contugesic again.  Then I had a huge fight with Wayne at Biotran.  He said no more would be available until January and to pay him now.  It ended with him saying he cut me off and not to contact me again.  ‘Keep your $75.’  It was mean beyond description.  It gave him a sadistic pleasure to say fuck you to me.  He had more customers for contugesic than he could handle, plus his own habit.”

"Juanita and Juan

Very clever with maracas

Making their fortune

Selling second hand tobaccos

Juan dances at Chico’s

And when the clients are addicted

He empties the ashtrays

And pockets all that he’s collected”

 -Brian Eno, “Baby’s on Fire”

“The fight had happened after I ordered a $5 sample of five stilnox (ambien) tablets from Biotran.  They were completely unlike any American ambien, you felt really out of it and out of control, almost like rohypnol.  I had a blackout.  My wife remembered me with a blister pack of about four or five contugesics left.  I grabbed them and chewed them one after another, thinking I’ll never get to do this drug again.

“The contugesic was making me sick.  Poisoning me.  I grew as pale and emaciated as when I had been a street junkie as a young man.  I felt like a wired zombie all the time.  It replaced food, sleep, sex, everything.  Eventually when I was kidding to one of my friends that if I unzipped my fly there would be a giant pill marked ‘DHC 60’ instead of my dick I knew I was in a serious situation.”

“So I tried to taper using the domestic narcotics, particularly 10mg of hydrocodone with an occasional dose of alprazolam.  Even more shocking is that while I thought the contugesic was reducing my need for hydrocodone, it actually had been a stronger drug.  The hydrocodone barely covered the withdrawal.  I spent three weeks crying, being sick, having diarrhea, shaking, having incredible muscular pains.  What little nightmare filled sleep I had was severely interrupted, and I’d wake up in a cold sweat. I even felt like I had a form of internal vomiting, which was terrifying.  People who think contugesic won’t bother your stomach because there’s no ibuprofen or paracematol in it have no idea how actually rotgut it is. It was the worst withdrawal I have ever experienced, physically and mentally, and I’ve kicked gear, methadone, oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine – the lot of ‘em.”

“It had been really hard to do this before because you really need a support system I didn’t have.  After all I had put her through, my wife backed me up and came through for me.  When I got what’s called in AA the ‘yips’ – acute withdrawal, a form of delerium tremens, she dropped our kid off with relatives for a few days.  I also received support from a woman who lost a husband to heroin and encouraged me to get clean.  Another friend introduced me to Don, a heavy hitter in AA.  

“Although Don was halfway across the country, he twelve stepped me.  At first, he told me I was in a critical stage, which scared me, but he kept his promise to stick by me.  He checked in with me every day, encouraged me to eat three square meals a day, kept telling me to get rehydrated, got me over the hump, understood the situation I was in and the need for privacy.  All the practical suggestions he made on nursing myself back to health made sense.  I began to return to sanity and safety.  Within two weeks there was color in my face again and I had gained five pounds back.

“Out of all the drugs I had done in my life, I never expected contugesic to be the one that flattened me.  I always thought I could handle anything.  I took the whole experience as the most cautionary one I’ve ever had with drug abuse.  From now on, I stay away.”

“You realize things about yourself after you go through the intense trauma of withdrawal.  It all seemed a regression on my part.  Although I grew up in New York City; I was born overseas and spent the first 6 years of my life in the United Kingdom, living mostly in London and Bournemouth.  I went back for many visits; I have a relative who’s an expatriate there and many friends in the UK.  Living in New York doesn’t give you a hell of a lot of permanence.  After 9-11 my family and I moved around quite a bit, and we’re in a place that I’m a fish out of water in.  Underneath it all, there was just a little kid in me who wanted to go home, and he perceived home as the United Kingdom.  The deadly drug came from a pusher in the UK, a version of it is used to detox junkies there, and the first person that came to my aid and pointed me in the right direction, Nicky, was from the United Kingdom.  It’s like I went back home to do this, at least psychically.”

The hideous withdrawal that happened to Brad raises several issues about contugesic.  If it is given to British junkies in the DF-118 immediate release format, perhaps it’s designed as a Clockwork Orange style negative reinforcement treatment.  And the fact that contugesic is time release is going to prolong and exaggerate the withdrawal symptoms even further.  And perhaps it’s an approximate European mid-point between the infamous oxycontin and hydrocodone – contugesic is also called “codicontin” for a reason.

Another reason to avoid contugesic is that the sales take place in a gray realm of e-commerce.  When you buy any foreign medicine off the net and through the mail you are stepping outside the law, risking arrest, possible seizure of your purchase or a blatant rip-off.   After Wayne at Biotran’s demands that people front him money for a January shipment, they suddenly heard he was having “difficulty” obtaining it.  Meaning he has lined his pockets with addicted customers’ cash in the meantime.  Del, who had boasted that he could taper easily from four contugesics to none by dropping one tablet each morning, now finds that domestic hydrocodone is upsetting his stomach and not covering his habit.  Del even attempted to reach Arish, who seems to have disappeared.  Contugesic is not even available through Europecare, which is basically a middleman between the customer and European labs that have items available.

Shockingly, Biotran keeps operating as openly as possible.  The who-is paper trail has a circuitous route from Birmingham to an IP address in Manchester to a doctor in Leeds who could possibly be the person who gave Wayne the contacts at the storage facility.  How Wayne keeps on operating an illegal business so openly remains an enigma.

Another consideration about contugesic is that it’s periodically unavailable.  There are periodic shortages of contugesic like heroin panics that strike terror in its aficionados.  Contugesic is not available for a stretch during the summer because a factory that distributes a large amount of it in Spain is closed for vacation.  This can throw users who haven’t stocked up into a tizzy, and they usually end up substituting other narcotics.  Recent rumors that the factory is downsizing have given all involved the Fear.  Both dealers and users are scrambling to buy out any supply of the drug they have access to, causing occasional delays in its availability.

Which leads to the final aspect of contugesic that makes it so suspect.  You don’t know how it’s stored, or how an unheated Spanish storage facility can distort its base chemical.  Even more disturbing is the fact that users would like to trust the blister pack containing the tablets as being an import from a lab in Spain, Switzerland or Germany.  However, drugs like Stilnox are sold for as little as 35 US cents in Eastern European countries like Romania.  Contugesic could be made anywhere in Europe by a crude facility and then later have a label slapped on from another country.  It’s your worst nightmare - you really don’t know what you’re buying.

Last updated: 31 August 2004