Table 3.
Consumer motivations for co-using cocaine/crack or methamphetamine with fentanyl
| Stimulant Type | Exemplar Quote |
|---|---|
| Methamphetamine | Female, 35: I think people are using more meth to counteract the fentanyl because it’s going to wake you up more. People are, from what I hear, they’re doing meth now with their heroin to counteract the fentanyl. |
| Methamphetamine | Male, 33: Yeah, as methamphetamine goes now, everybody calls it ice and it’s definitely out there. I would say eight out of ten people that inject heroin love to do ice because it’s a speedball, you know, you speedball it. … Me personally, I like to rush off one and then I wait a while and I like the rush off the other. |
| Methamphetamine | Male, 23: ‘Hey, if you want to get off heroin, meth’s a great way to do that.’ You’re going to get sick, you’re going to feel the withdrawals from the heroin because, I mean, meth, what that? It gives you a very short lived high but the effects of it last way longer than the high does.” |
| Methamphetamine | Male, 36: Heroin’s my drug of choice so that would be what I would fiend for. These days the meth I do to counteract the sedation [of fentanyl] and, well, just because it’s there. |
| Methamphetamine | Male, 44: Well, I do the meth if I’m sick and can’t find heroin. |
| Crack | Female, 44: We break the crack down. We call them 50/50s. Because sometimes, you know, it’s like we’ll tell each other, “I don’t want to go to sleep,” because, you know, when you wake up you’re not going to be feeling good. |
| Mixing illicit stimulants with fentanyl | Male, 36: Most people [who use both stimulants and opioids], they’re not going to mix them and do them together at the same time, they’re going to do one and then the other. They’re going to, like, do it and get that good rush from the fentanyl. And they’re going to feel it for a little bit, then they are going to do them up when they start to fall asleep. See, I’ve never personally met anyone that wants to do it in the same shot. Male, 23: Another reason, too, so they know how much of each is in it [the shot], so they can control how awake they’re going to be or how much fentanyl is going to make then tired.* |
| Cocaine | Male, 47: I just don’t do this fentanyl by itself. What I’m doing is so strong that if I were just doing it by itself, that I couldn’t probably get my head out of my lap and deal with my day. I don’t want to be just zonked out, you know. |
*
These statements were from a single interview involving two PWID who were intimate partners and recorded together. They recounted their experiences by joining and finishing each other’s statements and thus are included here as a joint quotation.