by Jan Hoffman, NY Times – 15.12.2025

Medetomidine, a veterinary sedative, mixed into fentanyl has sent thousands to hospitals, not only for overdose but for life-threatening withdrawal. It is spreading to other cities.

Joseph is newly in recovery from fentanyl mixed with medetomidine, a veterinary sedative. Philadelphia’s hospitals are strained by cases of medetomidine withdrawal, which have life-threatening symptoms.

Around 2 a.m., Joseph felt the withdrawal coming on, sudden and hard. He fell to the floor convulsing, vomiting ferociously. The delirium and hallucinations were starting.

He shook awake his friend, who had let him in earlier to shower, wash his clothes and grab some sleep. “Do you have a few dollars?” he pleaded. “I have to get right.”

The friend, a community outreach worker who had been trying for years to get him into treatment, looked up at him standing over her raving and unfocused.

“Either leave or let me call an ambulance,” she demanded.

At 34, Joseph (who, with his friend, recounted the evening in interviews with The New York Times) had been through opioid withdrawals many times — on Philadelphia streets, in jail, in rehab. But he had never experienced anything as terrifyingly all-consuming as this.

A new drug has been saturating the fentanyl supply in Philadelphia and moving to other cities throughout the East and Midwestern United States: medetomidine, a powerful veterinary sedative that causes almost instantaneous blackouts and, if not used every few hours, brings on life-threatening withdrawal symptoms.

It has created a new type of drug crisis — one that is occasioned not by overdosing on the drug, but by withdrawing from it.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/health/medetomidine-withdrawal-symptoms-treatment.html?