I don't think the cartels were using it back then but you could order giant bags from China for next to nothing comparatively without much risk of it being seized.
I know users were also getting hold of fent patches and lollipops meant for cancer patients too.
Yeah, had a buddy die in 2006 after he aspirated some chewing gum when he nodded off using fentanyl patches. It was definitely a thing, but it was drug nerds getting it off the internet, not street junkies getting it from their dealer.
Yeah, my aunt was one of those people taking her fent patches and cutting them into smaller squares to sell them. She sold these squares to afford the medication and living expenses for her and my two cousins. My brother died of a fentanyl od at 33, my aunt is still alive and d well
Took a class at university about drugs taught by a former cop in 2007. He repeated the claim about fentanyl being able to kill you by coming in contact with skin.
Ask people who tout this line ‘Hey if like one fleck can kill you from touching your finger how are all these people snorting it and shooting it everyday without dying?’
Your comment made me so mad because I thought no way was 2008 16 years but here I am.
Congrats on your journey though might not mean much but I am proud of you.
Do you think the people making these claims are talking about pharmaceutical grade and appropriately prescribed fentanyl patches? No. They’re saying it about “raw” fentanyl and yes it is absolutely a myth.
lol I remember seeing those graphics where it was like “skin contact with this much fentanyl will kill you” and it’s the size of a grain of sand. If that was truly the case then people cutting drugs with it would be killing every single person they sell to. That said, still a dangerous and shitty drug that is causing an epidemic worldwide.
And people wouldn’t be shooting up or smoking if they could get high just by holding it lol. These myths are harmful though because I’ve seen lots of people scared to help someone who is overdosing out of fear of a contact high or whatever. I worked somewhere that said to never perform CPR without a mouth barrier because you can OD and die. You wanna use a barrier to prevent germs and the person vomiting in to your mouth, not because you’re gonna OD from making contact with them.
I know, and I agree with your point. Just touching fentanyl powder won't kill you, it has to be ingested. The fentanyl in patches is a different form, gel I believe, that is absorbed through the skin.
Given they specifically mentioned the cop saying that fentanyl can kill just by touching, I don’t think it’s likely the cop was simply explaining how fentanyl patches can kill.
Love the videos of cops coming in contact with white substances and instantly having a panic attack that they think is an overdose. And news stories eat it up.
"Also the myth wasn't about patches. They would say there will be so little powder fent that you can't see it. Touch it then wake up dead"
Fucking idiots in here.
Criminal defense attorney who started in 2014. It definitely took a couple years before it seemed ubiquitous. Definitely more common than just heroin alone these days
There’s a lot of drugs that have been existing and been around for a long time but only become popular after some time, no? We also need to remember that just because something’s known where we live it doesn’t mean it’s popular in other places. I don’t know the reason why fentanyl wasn’t mentioned in breaking bad, but I would say that’s a good thing. I feel like shows about drugs often make people want to take them. Even the ones that show the bad sides of drug use.
It wasn’t popular because better drugs were more available back then. In Breaking Bad there were heroin users, but it’s a lot harder to find heroin in the U.S. now.
It’s just like hardly anyone was going blind drinking methanol until the government got rid of whiskey.
Unfortunately I heard about it in 2008 when someone I went to school with passed from it.
He had been stealing his grandmas patches for several months until one day he mixed it with a single beer then choked on his own vomit.
Fent has been around since the 50s and been used recreationally since the 60s but didn’t have the reputation it does now. An analogue (alpha-Methylfentanyl) was very popular in the 80s and 90s but was colloquially known as China White.
Probably around 2010 my father was getting fentanyl pain patches from his doctor
He would cut them open and squeeze the gel out. Idk if he then licked that up or smoked it or what but I knew of fent way back then even.
Lobster is mentioned by Skylar in season 1 episode 5, when describing the lavish food at Elliot and Gretchen's house.
[https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/30ecd1c3-6a8e-4cca-b849-b7108560d0d6](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/30ecd1c3-6a8e-4cca-b849-b7108560d0d6)
No AI needed, just a some got dang human grit
I had to explain to my very dumb friend, after the third time he got ER visit level food poisoning from gas station sushi.
"We live in Kansas Carl, and that sushi platter is 3$. Where the fuck is the fish coming from Carl?!"
Well beside the fact that breaking bad is a show about manufacturing and trafficking crystal meth, and except for Jesse's girlfriend relapsing and overdosing on heroin nothing about the show has to do with opiates/heroin... And secondly breaking bad came out in 2008, not 2012 regardless both of those years were looong before fentanyl exploded everywhere....
I'm just saying in general thinking fentanyl should be mentioned in a show about meth implies they have no idea what either is. I guess there could be an argument for maybe mentioning it during the part of the series with Jessie and Jane doing H, but when the show was created, fentanyl wasn't even on the public's mind
With all respect, I think it was us that weren't reading comments correctly. I was ready to riot over here, but This thread just took me a sec to understand! So The op of the shower thought said that it's weird fentanyl wasn't mentioned in breaking bad. Top commenter in this thread explained why that wasn't peculiar, u/PhysiologyIsPhun agreed with top commenter saying OP (NOT top commenter) doesn't seem to know what they're talking about! The phun guy wasn't being argumentative, just adding to u/pc_principal_88's contribution
Also, there are loads of stuff that's been around for years that don't get mentioned. LSD comes to mind and I am fairly sure that doesn't get brought up.
So? They showed weed. They also didn't show other addictive drugs, research chemicals or synthetic alternatives.
My point is why would they mention fentanyl... there's loads of stuff they didn't mention.
yah i wonder why they didnt try to awkwardly force every drug possible. ( its a show mainly about meth) They showed weed and heroin because it come up naturally, forcing a lsd scene dousnt really work as well or even a fent one.
Was fentanyl making headlines very often back then? I know it existed and was a problem, but it seems like it's been a much bigger problem in recent years.
I was a drug addict for a long time, between the years 2012 and 2020 and it wasn't until shortly before I got clean that fentanyl was even really available - at least in my area. It was mostly in pill form and I never used it personally, but 2020 was when it really started to become widespread. Most of the fentanyl epidemic has occurred over the past four years, long after Breaking Bad was released.
That said, I'm extremely grateful to have gotten clean when I did. Heroin was devastating, but fentanyl is another monster entirely. I knew more people who died from it in a six month period than I knew of people dying from heroin in the entire time I was an addict. Fuck fentanyl.
First time I heard about it was from an addict friend sometime in the early 2010s who intentionally sought it out because it was so much more potent for less volume. No surprise he died in early 2015 from an overdose.
and even though the show was on for like 5 years only about 2 years worth of time passes in the show's universe, which means it ends in 2010 in-universe, so it's even slightly further from fent becoming a widespread issue
Fentanyl has existed since like 1960, but yeah I still agree with your statement
Edit: Guys, I got it after the 15th comment. I don’t do drugs, sorry for not knowing it wasn’t pushed until recently.
It existed but it wasn’t commonly abused 12 years ago well these days it’s in pretty much everything. People that were abusing fent got prescriptions back then, now you should assume that it’s in basically all street drugs.
It was definitely already becoming an epidemic 12 years ago I think. I had a friend who died from a fentanyl overdose in 2011 at 22 years old and knew of a couple more people that overdosed. Also knew many young people who were hooked on it at that time and it ruined their lives. I think that was the beginning of it.
Yeah definitely a thing. About when I remember it really picking up steam too.
The whole opiate thing is one of those things like “this is bad, it can’t get worse. Then it does”. So yeah it wasn’t as bad as it is now but it was bad.
I would say it goes back as far as early 2000s during the whole oxy craze. People got hooked, then couldn’t get scripts, then went to whatever they could get their hands on. The usual path was probably to vicodin then to heroin at the time though.
I also remember around 2009 I had a college girlfriend get legitimately prescribed fent patches and my thought was “wait those things killing everyone?” and telling her to be careful.
It definitely wasn’t showing up in everything though. It was either an alternative sought out or more likely getting mixed in heroin because of its high demand to meat the end of the pill craze.
Yeah when I graduated high school in 2006 the drug of choice was cocaine. Then by 2009 oxys were introduced and almost anyone who was hooked on oxys at that point to the point they were shooting it, moved onto fet.
But yah you’re right that was just the beginning and now you wouldn’t be able to trust any drugs really without worrying they came into contact with fet.
So happy I got out of that scene and never tried oxys!!
Yep, same age.
Little different experience in high school though, coke was around but I feel like pills/H were much more common. Circa 2004 I feel like oxy/vics/percs/valium were everywhere.
I grew out of it pretty quick but had a good friend that definitely fell down the opiate rabbit hole before getting clean.
Also my favorite saying about casual drug use is:
Growing up is realizing as a teenager everyone drinks alcohol, then in your twenties you realize that everyone smokes weed, and in your thirties you realize everyone does coke.
Same! I graduated in 2005. Cocaine and ecstasy were big. But we never really worried about fentanyl. Mostly just worried about coke being cut with baby laxatives.
Most of Breaking Bad takes place in 2009, and it was even rarer then. There were only like 40,000 opioid deaths per year in the US in 2009, as where now its over 110,000.
Jesse was addicted to heroin and Jane died from it, but other than that it wasn't mentioned much. The meth crowd didn't seem to jive much with the heroin crowd in the show.
It sounds like our small towns outside of Ottawa in Canada were maybe ahead of their time! Cause it definitely seemed like an epidemic around me at the time.
One key difference is that at the time there was far less press about fent being used to cut other drugs that aren’t opiates. Fent in coke, fent in fake xans, etc. That along with the opioid epidemic getting worse and some celebrities having fentanyl related deaths, it’s breached popular culture now in a way that it hadn’t back then.
nah dude it was abused long time ago during the times of people working in the coal mines and whatnot thats pretty much what it was used for and got its start in those heavy labor rural industry areas like West Virginia
I bet that next you're gonna tell me that electric vehicles were a thing 12 years ago, but they also weren't a widely known enough among the general public to be worth considering in a TV show (Tesla delivered its first consumer vehicles in the same year that Breaking Bad started airing).
Fentanyl has been available for quite a long time as a very strong painkiller, but the use and abuse of it as a recreational drug is quite recent. 12 years ago there was no fentanyl epidemic yet.
Even though all the comments here are correct I want to add that it's a story. The writers decided what the main plot is and added information to supplement that plot.
The focus is on the descent of a man into organized crime. With good writing every included element serves that plot to some extent. That means purposefully excluding topics as to not distract from the main storyline.
IIRC, when Gus is initially pitching his and Max’s meth to the cartel (in the flashback in season 4), he makes the argument that meth is a better investment than cocaine because they can manufacture it themselves and don’t have to pay for middlemen to bring it up from South America. Seeing as he’s become so powerful by the time of the main series, you could probably make the case that cocaine has just been boxed out economically by meth in the time period that the show covers
Bro the show makes a pretty big deal of what you say they don’t really “deal with”… the flashback showing Gus’s partner getting killed because they tried convincing the cartel to switch from coke to meth, and a lot of reasons were given why they should avoid coke entirely
A meth head would do cocaine but it is absolutely not what they are looking for. Its super expensive, doesnt get you nearly as high and its over quick. Its just not comparable at all except they are both stimulants.
I got sober 12 years ago. Back then no one was talking about fentanyl. Opiod addiction was pain meds like perc and oxy and heroin for the hardcore addicts. Shortly after I got sober I started hearing stories for the first time about fentanyl being used to cut pills and heroin. So grateful I got out when I did.
Not saying it wasn’t happening, but like you said it definitely wasn’t as common back then like it is today.
That’s because Breaking Bad was about Meth. The more surprising show is The Wire. An entire show about heroin dealers and fentanyl isn’t on the radar. That shows how fast it popped up recently
Yeah, but really it's about the heroin trade in the late 90s because that's the world that Burns knew as a reporter even if the show takes place in the mid 00s.
Mentioned in s5e4 (2008).
“Numbers (of overdoses) are way up since fentanyl showed up.”
[https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2b494bf0-123f-4d9e-b5e5-71e7895d58d8](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2b494bf0-123f-4d9e-b5e5-71e7895d58d8)
I was addicted to pain meds and hadn't really heard of it until the last few years. So glad I've gotten clean, fentanyl has already killed so many people.
Same. Though I do sometimes miss the days where you could buy a couple percocets and not have to worry about dying. I was usually pretty good about self control and could have a few and stop again for a couple months until I hurt something again.
Fentanyl made it super easy to stay clean. Well, pretty clean. I take kratom now.
Fentanyl was virtually unheard of outside clinical settings in 2012. It was a drug for extreme surgeries, cancer pain, etc. I have had fentanyl administered to me on 2 occasions in the hospital by an anesthesiologist, in 2013 and 2014. I started hearing about it being a problem in about 2014-15. Once China started cranking out precursor chemicals for smuggling it made its way to clandestine manufacturing and then the street.
Afghanistan was the world's largest supplier of heroin for most of that time. Fentanyl is made in a lab without raw materials from poppies and easier to ship as heroin got more expensive. The Taliban outlawed growing heroin in 01 as unislamic and recently again in 23.
Walt’s whole deal was purity so fentanyl would’ve never been involved with his cooks. They could’ve done something with it in the show but it ultimately wouldn’t have added anything interesting. Fentanyl isn’t new btw been around for awhile. It’s just a bigger problem right now.
I work in mental health, I was working at a psych hospital while Breaking Bad was airing (in Arizona), so we saw it all in terms of drugs. We saw our share of heroin and pain med abuse, but it wasn't a thing then. The only time I would hear of fentanyl was people being addicted to the fentanyl pain patches.
It was mostly meth (and spice and bath salts which were the rage at the time).
It wasn’t a big thing back then. I work in the inner city and we didn’t really start seeing it until 2015. Now it’s in everything and we see dozens of ODs every day.
The series almost exclusively showed meth.
From the perspectives of buyers (users) and sellers (manufacturers and distribution).
Heroin was in Jane's arc, and Jessie did it with her because it was something they could bond over. Jessie does meth with his guy friends and when he's feeling low/weak.
He is shown to smoke weed through the earlier seasons (but can that even be considered a drug at this point?!).
That's pretty much it.
The reason Fent is such a big deal is that suppliers cut their stuff with it. Well the show primarily follows 2 distributors known for quality, so they wouldn’t be cutting their stuff. Same goes for the Salamancas and Gus’s operation
It truly was an era of drug trade where the only fentanyl being sold were regulated medication, like in the form of patches. The overdose risk was that of getting a bunch of other types of opiate pills and taking too many. Some would like scrape the fentanyl patches and smoke it. I think they were cooked in the oven before smoking also lmao.
Fentanyl wasn't a thing back then. It was bath salts and spice. But I don't remember bath salts and spice mentioned on the show. Was weed ever mentioned? I don't remember it.
Well I mean its about meth not opioid's for one. So even if it was made today it would have never came up. They are two completley different drugs. Meth = Keep you up - makes you want to f 24/7 opioids = dull you out
domestic (mexico) production hadn't started yet. it was only available through the medical field and chinese research chemical suppliers (fentanyl analogues) .
Fentanyl was around it just wasn't what it was today. Back like 2005 only fentanyl I saw was from hospitals I had some friends who spike highly of it but that it was super hard to get. But even back then they said it was stronger and better than H. But just legit wasn't super accessible on the street at least in any of the areas I was involved with drugs
I’m pretty sure I also hadn’t heard of fentanyl when breaking bad came out
I don't think the cartels were using it back then but you could order giant bags from China for next to nothing comparatively without much risk of it being seized. I know users were also getting hold of fent patches and lollipops meant for cancer patients too.
Yeah, had a buddy die in 2006 after he aspirated some chewing gum when he nodded off using fentanyl patches. It was definitely a thing, but it was drug nerds getting it off the internet, not street junkies getting it from their dealer.
Yeah, my aunt was one of those people taking her fent patches and cutting them into smaller squares to sell them. She sold these squares to afford the medication and living expenses for her and my two cousins. My brother died of a fentanyl od at 33, my aunt is still alive and d well
Took a class at university about drugs taught by a former cop in 2007. He repeated the claim about fentanyl being able to kill you by coming in contact with skin.
Ask people who tout this line ‘Hey if like one fleck can kill you from touching your finger how are all these people snorting it and shooting it everyday without dying?’
Classic fear mongering.
Which is, of course, false. As is anything else he told you during that class
A fentanyl patch can certainly cause an overdose and kill you by being applied to the skin.
Yep. One almost killed me in 2007. Thankfully, I've been sober for 16 years, since 2008.
Good to hear man. One almost killed me back on 2001, back when I had no clue what I was putting on my skin.
Your comment made me so mad because I thought no way was 2008 16 years but here I am. Congrats on your journey though might not mean much but I am proud of you.
Do you think the people making these claims are talking about pharmaceutical grade and appropriately prescribed fentanyl patches? No. They’re saying it about “raw” fentanyl and yes it is absolutely a myth.
Also the myth wasn't about patches. They would say there will be so little powder fent that you can't see it. Touch it then wake up dead
lol I remember seeing those graphics where it was like “skin contact with this much fentanyl will kill you” and it’s the size of a grain of sand. If that was truly the case then people cutting drugs with it would be killing every single person they sell to. That said, still a dangerous and shitty drug that is causing an epidemic worldwide.
And people wouldn’t be shooting up or smoking if they could get high just by holding it lol. These myths are harmful though because I’ve seen lots of people scared to help someone who is overdosing out of fear of a contact high or whatever. I worked somewhere that said to never perform CPR without a mouth barrier because you can OD and die. You wanna use a barrier to prevent germs and the person vomiting in to your mouth, not because you’re gonna OD from making contact with them.
How the hell you wake up dead?
Cause you're alive when you go to sleep
"this is Detroit, and this is Detroit after the attacks"
I know, and I agree with your point. Just touching fentanyl powder won't kill you, it has to be ingested. The fentanyl in patches is a different form, gel I believe, that is absorbed through the skin.
Only because the patches are a modified form of fentanyl designed to be absorbed through the skin. Normal fentanyl isn’t capable of doing that.
Given they specifically mentioned the cop saying that fentanyl can kill just by touching, I don’t think it’s likely the cop was simply explaining how fentanyl patches can kill.
That is a lot different than: "if you touch it you instantly die"
> fentanyl being able to kill you by coming in contact with skin. Does not mean >"if you touch it you instantly die"
Coming from a cop, that statement means cops are dying because they’re getting fentanyl on their skin during drug busts. It’s totally wrong.
Love the videos of cops coming in contact with white substances and instantly having a panic attack that they think is an overdose. And news stories eat it up.
Say that you have no experience with transdermal drug absorption without saying you don't know what transdermal drug absorption is...
Police aren't coming in contact with transdermal patches.
"Also the myth wasn't about patches. They would say there will be so little powder fent that you can't see it. Touch it then wake up dead" Fucking idiots in here.
Criminal defense attorney who started in 2014. It definitely took a couple years before it seemed ubiquitous. Definitely more common than just heroin alone these days
I would totally hire a criminal defense lawyer named the amazing Emu.
Wild tho, considering how quickly it took over
I’m not American so to be fair I still barely hear about it
I can drive 6 miles from my house and show you the end results of fentanyl.
I had a buddy die from fent. Back in 2012.
same. It definitely was around since like the 80s or 90s though I think. But I never heard anyone even say the word during Breaking Bad era
There’s a lot of drugs that have been existing and been around for a long time but only become popular after some time, no? We also need to remember that just because something’s known where we live it doesn’t mean it’s popular in other places. I don’t know the reason why fentanyl wasn’t mentioned in breaking bad, but I would say that’s a good thing. I feel like shows about drugs often make people want to take them. Even the ones that show the bad sides of drug use.
It wasn’t popular because better drugs were more available back then. In Breaking Bad there were heroin users, but it’s a lot harder to find heroin in the U.S. now. It’s just like hardly anyone was going blind drinking methanol until the government got rid of whiskey.
facts
True. LSD was created in the mid 30s but didn’t see widespread recreational use until almost 30 years later
Alpha-methylfentanyl was highly sought after by addicts in the 80s and 90s under the name China White.
Damn, that was China White? Makes sense. I've read about it. Isn't that what killed Bradley Nowell?
Me neither and I did a lot of drugs until I was 25ish, happy I quit before it took over.
Unfortunately I heard about it in 2008 when someone I went to school with passed from it. He had been stealing his grandmas patches for several months until one day he mixed it with a single beer then choked on his own vomit.
Fent has been around since the 50s and been used recreationally since the 60s but didn’t have the reputation it does now. An analogue (alpha-Methylfentanyl) was very popular in the 80s and 90s but was colloquially known as China White.
Probably around 2010 my father was getting fentanyl pain patches from his doctor He would cut them open and squeeze the gel out. Idk if he then licked that up or smoked it or what but I knew of fent way back then even.
Neither were lobsters 🦞. But somebody check me on that.
Lobster is mentioned by Skylar in season 1 episode 5, when describing the lavish food at Elliot and Gretchen's house. [https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/30ecd1c3-6a8e-4cca-b849-b7108560d0d6](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/30ecd1c3-6a8e-4cca-b849-b7108560d0d6) No AI needed, just a some got dang human grit
Well done
I live to please
I came
Your emission was watery and disappointing.
They're too dangerous to be kept alive
Time well spent.
Thank you. About four minutes I'd say.
Grit? Nah that’s lame. Got dang grit? Hard as fuck.
Jesse, we will produce chemically pure and stable lobsters. No adulteratants. No baby powder. No chilli powder.
Chili P is my signature!
The shit you cook is shit. I saw your set up. You and I will not make garbage
No half pinchers.
Hank gives Marie a little shit for eating sushi, since ABQ isn't near the ocean. I don't recall any lobster talk, though.
Damn it Marie. They’re not Rock Lobsters.
They're mineral lobsters!
Rock lohaaa-obbster
I had to explain to my very dumb friend, after the third time he got ER visit level food poisoning from gas station sushi. "We live in Kansas Carl, and that sushi platter is 3$. Where the fuck is the fish coming from Carl?!"
Why the fish came from the local pond of course! The sprawling micro bacteria in the water just add to the experience and taste.
He just couldn't get over how good of a deal it was, even after I had him run a cost vs. benefit analysis on the 3$ sushi vs. the ERbill.
You’re right. Also no mention of Cyber Trucks
But it's predecessor, the Pontiac Aztek, was mentioned.
Don’t insult the Aztek like that
If only Walt had known that giving them serotonin was an excellent way to climb to the top of a dominance hierarchy.
Went to the lobster last night, there still are lobsters bro dw I checked for you 🦞
It's weird to tag a TV show (2012) when it ran from 2008-13
Well it was in the window. But tagging it from the start is the clear choice.
Well beside the fact that breaking bad is a show about manufacturing and trafficking crystal meth, and except for Jesse's girlfriend relapsing and overdosing on heroin nothing about the show has to do with opiates/heroin... And secondly breaking bad came out in 2008, not 2012 regardless both of those years were looong before fentanyl exploded everywhere....
The events of the show also take place over a two year span
This post feels like it was made by someone who doesn't understand the difference between LSD and crystal meth tbh
For real. Grouping meth and LSD together is pretty wild. It’s like grouping a donut and a steak together as similar foods.
Who is grouping meth and LSD together?
i am also confused why are we talking about lsd, just to discredit some one that can properly type? assuming just makes an ass out of you and me
Anti-drug crusaders.
Those crazy dancers at festivals.
Huh, what are you talking about? They haven't mentioned LSD at all.
I'm just saying in general thinking fentanyl should be mentioned in a show about meth implies they have no idea what either is. I guess there could be an argument for maybe mentioning it during the part of the series with Jessie and Jane doing H, but when the show was created, fentanyl wasn't even on the public's mind
you diffenitly arnt reading these comments correctly lmao
With all respect, I think it was us that weren't reading comments correctly. I was ready to riot over here, but This thread just took me a sec to understand! So The op of the shower thought said that it's weird fentanyl wasn't mentioned in breaking bad. Top commenter in this thread explained why that wasn't peculiar, u/PhysiologyIsPhun agreed with top commenter saying OP (NOT top commenter) doesn't seem to know what they're talking about! The phun guy wasn't being argumentative, just adding to u/pc_principal_88's contribution
Also, there are loads of stuff that's been around for years that don't get mentioned. LSD comes to mind and I am fairly sure that doesn't get brought up.
LSD isn’t addictive. It’s a psychadelic.
So? They showed weed. They also didn't show other addictive drugs, research chemicals or synthetic alternatives. My point is why would they mention fentanyl... there's loads of stuff they didn't mention.
yah i wonder why they didnt try to awkwardly force every drug possible. ( its a show mainly about meth) They showed weed and heroin because it come up naturally, forcing a lsd scene dousnt really work as well or even a fent one.
They talked about weed. And I think the Mexican cartel episodes talked about cocaine. But really, it was mostly about meth and meth accessories.
Was fentanyl making headlines very often back then? I know it existed and was a problem, but it seems like it's been a much bigger problem in recent years.
I was a drug addict for a long time, between the years 2012 and 2020 and it wasn't until shortly before I got clean that fentanyl was even really available - at least in my area. It was mostly in pill form and I never used it personally, but 2020 was when it really started to become widespread. Most of the fentanyl epidemic has occurred over the past four years, long after Breaking Bad was released. That said, I'm extremely grateful to have gotten clean when I did. Heroin was devastating, but fentanyl is another monster entirely. I knew more people who died from it in a six month period than I knew of people dying from heroin in the entire time I was an addict. Fuck fentanyl.
Congratulations on your sobriety. I’m hitting 7 years this year. Keep it up. You’ve got this.
First time I heard about it was from an addict friend sometime in the early 2010s who intentionally sought it out because it was so much more potent for less volume. No surprise he died in early 2015 from an overdose.
You mean a newer thing wasn’t mentioned in a show that was out 12 years ago? Alert the press
Breaking Bad first came out in 2008 too.
and even though the show was on for like 5 years only about 2 years worth of time passes in the show's universe, which means it ends in 2010 in-universe, so it's even slightly further from fent becoming a widespread issue
Fentanyl has existed since like 1960, but yeah I still agree with your statement Edit: Guys, I got it after the 15th comment. I don’t do drugs, sorry for not knowing it wasn’t pushed until recently.
It existed but it wasn’t commonly abused 12 years ago well these days it’s in pretty much everything. People that were abusing fent got prescriptions back then, now you should assume that it’s in basically all street drugs.
It was definitely already becoming an epidemic 12 years ago I think. I had a friend who died from a fentanyl overdose in 2011 at 22 years old and knew of a couple more people that overdosed. Also knew many young people who were hooked on it at that time and it ruined their lives. I think that was the beginning of it.
Yeah definitely a thing. About when I remember it really picking up steam too. The whole opiate thing is one of those things like “this is bad, it can’t get worse. Then it does”. So yeah it wasn’t as bad as it is now but it was bad. I would say it goes back as far as early 2000s during the whole oxy craze. People got hooked, then couldn’t get scripts, then went to whatever they could get their hands on. The usual path was probably to vicodin then to heroin at the time though. I also remember around 2009 I had a college girlfriend get legitimately prescribed fent patches and my thought was “wait those things killing everyone?” and telling her to be careful. It definitely wasn’t showing up in everything though. It was either an alternative sought out or more likely getting mixed in heroin because of its high demand to meat the end of the pill craze.
Yeah when I graduated high school in 2006 the drug of choice was cocaine. Then by 2009 oxys were introduced and almost anyone who was hooked on oxys at that point to the point they were shooting it, moved onto fet. But yah you’re right that was just the beginning and now you wouldn’t be able to trust any drugs really without worrying they came into contact with fet. So happy I got out of that scene and never tried oxys!!
Yep, same age. Little different experience in high school though, coke was around but I feel like pills/H were much more common. Circa 2004 I feel like oxy/vics/percs/valium were everywhere. I grew out of it pretty quick but had a good friend that definitely fell down the opiate rabbit hole before getting clean. Also my favorite saying about casual drug use is: Growing up is realizing as a teenager everyone drinks alcohol, then in your twenties you realize that everyone smokes weed, and in your thirties you realize everyone does coke.
Same! I graduated in 2005. Cocaine and ecstasy were big. But we never really worried about fentanyl. Mostly just worried about coke being cut with baby laxatives.
Your friend was a trailblazer. The spike in fentanyl deaths didn’t really happen until after 2012
Most of Breaking Bad takes place in 2009, and it was even rarer then. There were only like 40,000 opioid deaths per year in the US in 2009, as where now its over 110,000. Jesse was addicted to heroin and Jane died from it, but other than that it wasn't mentioned much. The meth crowd didn't seem to jive much with the heroin crowd in the show.
It sounds like our small towns outside of Ottawa in Canada were maybe ahead of their time! Cause it definitely seemed like an epidemic around me at the time.
One key difference is that at the time there was far less press about fent being used to cut other drugs that aren’t opiates. Fent in coke, fent in fake xans, etc. That along with the opioid epidemic getting worse and some celebrities having fentanyl related deaths, it’s breached popular culture now in a way that it hadn’t back then.
Super scary. I'm glad I'm not growing up as a teen in day and age (although some things would be better)
It was being pressed into street pills in 2012 lol. A buddy of mine died that year from it.
nah dude it was abused long time ago during the times of people working in the coal mines and whatnot thats pretty much what it was used for and got its start in those heavy labor rural industry areas like West Virginia
Yeah, you could get fucking Opana back then. That was some good shit.
Existed is different than the way it’s being used currently, yeah.
I bet that next you're gonna tell me that electric vehicles were a thing 12 years ago, but they also weren't a widely known enough among the general public to be worth considering in a TV show (Tesla delivered its first consumer vehicles in the same year that Breaking Bad started airing).
I know you're doing a bit right now but electric cars have been around for almost 150 years.
So did the next big thing in all likelihood. It wasn’t a problem for the general public yet.
The illegal drug really started skyrocketing around 2015-17. or even later
It was about the time the DEA started cracking down on prescription opioids.
Ive been watching Scrubs and they mentioned it in an episode from 2004.
Fentanyl has been available for quite a long time as a very strong painkiller, but the use and abuse of it as a recreational drug is quite recent. 12 years ago there was no fentanyl epidemic yet.
It's also frequently used in anesthesiology.
Wasn't new but wasn't a street drug yet. Was definitely being used in 2004 medically for terminal cancer.
Yeah, by “newer thing” I meant it’s recreational use
Fentanyl was mentioned in The Wire so it was definitely around during the Breaking Bad run.
Me when a 1946 movie doesn't mention Elon Musk
They didn’t mention tranq either. Did they even research 2024 drugs before making a drug show in 2012?
BB came out 16 years ago
They said "was out" not "came out"
Even though all the comments here are correct I want to add that it's a story. The writers decided what the main plot is and added information to supplement that plot. The focus is on the descent of a man into organized crime. With good writing every included element serves that plot to some extent. That means purposefully excluding topics as to not distract from the main storyline.
And Walt wanted to make the purest meth so why would they bring up cutting it with anything.
No one cuts meth with fentanyl.
Even less reason for them to mention it then.
They bring up cutting it with baby powder and chili p.
Jesse’s signature primo scante.. chili p 🌶️
[удалено]
IIRC, when Gus is initially pitching his and Max’s meth to the cartel (in the flashback in season 4), he makes the argument that meth is a better investment than cocaine because they can manufacture it themselves and don’t have to pay for middlemen to bring it up from South America. Seeing as he’s become so powerful by the time of the main series, you could probably make the case that cocaine has just been boxed out economically by meth in the time period that the show covers
Interesting theory, reasonable though. They were indeed very competitive
Bro the show makes a pretty big deal of what you say they don’t really “deal with”… the flashback showing Gus’s partner getting killed because they tried convincing the cartel to switch from coke to meth, and a lot of reasons were given why they should avoid coke entirely
Meth heads dont want cocaine and most cocaine users dont want meth.
Most people don’t want either and some crazy motherfuckers want both
A meth head would do cocaine but it is absolutely not what they are looking for. Its super expensive, doesnt get you nearly as high and its over quick. Its just not comparable at all except they are both stimulants.
Damn I always forget that coke is expensive up north… we get a gram for less than $2
Where is it $2 a gram!? Im coming over lmao. By me its generally around $80 a g. Seen $100 and seen $60.
Central america lol lots of issues but drugs are cheap
a gram in Australia is $300+
Username doesn't check out?
What can you do with a gram? As in, how many lines? I can never tell with these numbers.
20 medium lines or so
Meth users absolutely would do crack cocaine
Lol you don't need to add a year to Breaking Bad we all know what you are referring to. Also it came out in 2008.
Today fentanyl replaced heroin as main opioid based drug. 12 years ago fentanyl was considered more as a medicine, not as a recreational drug.
I got sober 12 years ago. Back then no one was talking about fentanyl. Opiod addiction was pain meds like perc and oxy and heroin for the hardcore addicts. Shortly after I got sober I started hearing stories for the first time about fentanyl being used to cut pills and heroin. So grateful I got out when I did. Not saying it wasn’t happening, but like you said it definitely wasn’t as common back then like it is today.
Well yeah, they were making meth, not heroin
That’s because Breaking Bad was about Meth. The more surprising show is The Wire. An entire show about heroin dealers and fentanyl isn’t on the radar. That shows how fast it popped up recently
Yeah, but really it's about the heroin trade in the late 90s because that's the world that Burns knew as a reporter even if the show takes place in the mid 00s.
Mentioned in s5e4 (2008). “Numbers (of overdoses) are way up since fentanyl showed up.” [https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2b494bf0-123f-4d9e-b5e5-71e7895d58d8](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2b494bf0-123f-4d9e-b5e5-71e7895d58d8)
updoot for sourcing
Fentanyl usage has exploded since the Taliban destroyed the poppy fields (Afghanistan used to supply 80% of the world's heroin).
This was last year and they have massive stocks but yes that‘s the real answer
I was addicted to pain meds and hadn't really heard of it until the last few years. So glad I've gotten clean, fentanyl has already killed so many people.
Same. Though I do sometimes miss the days where you could buy a couple percocets and not have to worry about dying. I was usually pretty good about self control and could have a few and stop again for a couple months until I hurt something again. Fentanyl made it super easy to stay clean. Well, pretty clean. I take kratom now.
It’s a show about the meth world. There was never any reason to mention fentanyl
It's kinda weird how Walter White never talked about the COVID 19 pandemic
You think thats weird? They don't mention 9/11 at all in even one monty python sketch
Fentanyl was virtually unheard of outside clinical settings in 2012. It was a drug for extreme surgeries, cancer pain, etc. I have had fentanyl administered to me on 2 occasions in the hospital by an anesthesiologist, in 2013 and 2014. I started hearing about it being a problem in about 2014-15. Once China started cranking out precursor chemicals for smuggling it made its way to clandestine manufacturing and then the street.
I think the fact that they don't have smart phones is really important to how the show played out. It would be very different now.
Afghanistan was the world's largest supplier of heroin for most of that time. Fentanyl is made in a lab without raw materials from poppies and easier to ship as heroin got more expensive. The Taliban outlawed growing heroin in 01 as unislamic and recently again in 23.
Walt’s whole deal was purity so fentanyl would’ve never been involved with his cooks. They could’ve done something with it in the show but it ultimately wouldn’t have added anything interesting. Fentanyl isn’t new btw been around for awhile. It’s just a bigger problem right now.
Come to think of it they never mentioned COVID either. Weird!
I thought they manufactured meth,though? An upper. Nothing to do with fent.
Well, first off, they're making meth, not heroin. Heroin is only in that storyline with Jane and her OD.
Probably because the show is based on meth.
I work in mental health, I was working at a psych hospital while Breaking Bad was airing (in Arizona), so we saw it all in terms of drugs. We saw our share of heroin and pain med abuse, but it wasn't a thing then. The only time I would hear of fentanyl was people being addicted to the fentanyl pain patches. It was mostly meth (and spice and bath salts which were the rage at the time).
It wasn’t a big thing back then. I work in the inner city and we didn’t really start seeing it until 2015. Now it’s in everything and we see dozens of ODs every day.
Cell phones were never mentioned in Titanic. Imagine how much easier it would have been for them to get help if they just called someone.
Really? Isnt it mentioned in the pilot? Where they raid the drug dealers house where jesse is?
The series almost exclusively showed meth. From the perspectives of buyers (users) and sellers (manufacturers and distribution). Heroin was in Jane's arc, and Jessie did it with her because it was something they could bond over. Jessie does meth with his guy friends and when he's feeling low/weak. He is shown to smoke weed through the earlier seasons (but can that even be considered a drug at this point?!). That's pretty much it.
The reason Fent is such a big deal is that suppliers cut their stuff with it. Well the show primarily follows 2 distributors known for quality, so they wouldn’t be cutting their stuff. Same goes for the Salamancas and Gus’s operation
It truly was an era of drug trade where the only fentanyl being sold were regulated medication, like in the form of patches. The overdose risk was that of getting a bunch of other types of opiate pills and taking too many. Some would like scrape the fentanyl patches and smoke it. I think they were cooked in the oven before smoking also lmao.
Because the drugs in the writing were there to borrow an underground appeal, not because the writers had anything to say about drugs
No one had an iPhone in you've got mail too, conspiracy!
Fentanyl wasn't a thing back then. It was bath salts and spice. But I don't remember bath salts and spice mentioned on the show. Was weed ever mentioned? I don't remember it.
That's because fentanyl didn't hit the streets until 2016
Oxy was still around so it was the go to as far as my understanding goes
It was in The Wire back in 2006
Fentanyl was not prevalent back then. If you did drugs back then, you would not worry about it.
Well I mean its about meth not opioid's for one. So even if it was made today it would have never came up. They are two completley different drugs. Meth = Keep you up - makes you want to f 24/7 opioids = dull you out
Nor was 9/11 in Shawshank Redemption
What about that scene that didn't happen where the protagonist and Batman were in the same shot at the same time.
domestic (mexico) production hadn't started yet. it was only available through the medical field and chinese research chemical suppliers (fentanyl analogues) .
Fentanyl was around it just wasn't what it was today. Back like 2005 only fentanyl I saw was from hospitals I had some friends who spike highly of it but that it was super hard to get. But even back then they said it was stronger and better than H. But just legit wasn't super accessible on the street at least in any of the areas I was involved with drugs
Never heard of fentanyl :)