As more heroin is mixed with fentanyl, opioid crisis turns even deadlier
CHICAGO - Nicole Clark's first encounter with fentanyl-laced heroin came a decade ago, when it was a novelty in Chicago's drug scene. What she remembers still haunts her.
She snorted a small line of the drug soon after she bought it on a street corner, but before she and her friend could reach the nearby expressway for the ride back to Huntley, she fell unconscious. When she awoke, she was in a hospital bed, her body bristling with tubes.
That was enough to scare Clark, now 41, away from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 40 times more potent than heroin. But her friend, 42-year-old Keith Glissendorf, said the drug's dangerous power wasn't a red flag - it was exactly why he wanted it.
"I was (patronizing a particular dealer) because he had the fentanyl dope," said Glissendorf, who, like Clark, is now in a methadone treatment
