![]() ![]() ![]() “So they go on these long tours, and physically it’s horrible. “The stress of the road is very difficult, but that’s where the money is,” says Harold Owens, senior director of MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s charitable assistance program. Artists are touring more than ever before. But fentanyl’s rise in music may be rooted in deeper trends. Opioids have gripped the music business for decades – codeine and Percodan were among the drugs found in Elvis Presley’s body when he died in 1977. The drug’s potency can pose a chilling new threat for users: In a previous era, “someone would OD and you’d have time to soak them in a bath or keep them moving until they got to the ER,” says Gene Bowen, a former road manager and founder of Road Recovery, a nonprofit that teams entertainment-industry pros who have overcome personal struggles (like addiction) with at-risk youth for concert events and studio recording projects. You need a very sophisticated lab in order to measure a concentration that would be safe.” “A tiny difference in your content can mean someone dying. “The dose you require is minuscule, like a grain of salt,” says Volkow. A fatal fentanyl overdose can happen in barely one minute. Opioid users had to look elsewhere, and turned to heroin, which dealers started mixing with fentanyl for a faster-acting, more euphoric and addictive high. This happened after doctors cut back on prescribing Ox圜ontin in 2007, when the government sued its manufacturer for misleading the public about the drug’s addictive risks. Though illegal in pill form, black-market fentanyl pills have become common in the past decade. These days, it’s prescribed as a lollipop or a patch, which slowly releases the dosage through the skin, typically used for a few days after a major surgery. The drug has surpassed heroin as the leading cause of overdose deaths, and new data shows that fentanyl overdose deaths jumped 30 percent between July 2016 and September 2017.įentanyl was invented in 1959 to help cancer patients cope with intense post-surgical pain. in 2016 (the most recent survey), one-third were fentanyl-related, double the amount from the year before. Of the nearly 65,000 fatal opioid overdoses in the U.S. ![]() “Those you get very likely in the black market.” (Petty’s family declined to comment.)īeyond the music industry, fentanyl has emerged as the most dangerous new drug in a generation. Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Despite having a previous history of opioid abuse, he’d been prescribed a fentanyl patch to help with his pain in addition to that slow-releasing patch, two other, more dangerous, derivatives of the drug were also found in his system. The one the Petty family blamed: fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin, according to the DEA. The 66-year-old had accidentally overdosed mixing a variety of medications. In October, a week after the final date at the Hollywood Bowl, Petty was dead. He should have canceledĪnd gone home and gone to the hospital, but not Tom. “And he fought his way through that tour. “Tom was ill,” said his friend Stevie Nicks. He got through it with painkillers and used a golf cart to move around backstage. Petty spent the entire 53-date tour struggling with severe pain from a fracture in his left hip. “The road and the studio are the only places I’ve ever felt completely OK,” Tom Petty told Rolling Stone last summer, explaining why he was launching one last grueling tour to mark his 40th anniversary with the Heartbreakers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |