Krokodil

I watched a TIME video about krokodil that looked like it was filmed in hell. Emanuele Satoli is the one who made it, which means he spent time in Russia actually filming people using the drug—documenting something you can’t really un-see.

The trap closes fast. Krokodil is absurdly easy to make, and once you start, there’s no quitting because withdrawal is somehow worse than the drug itself. Your memory goes. Your skin rots at the injection sites. The video shows young girls—actually shows them—with their genitals destroyed. People who look like they’re already dead but are still somehow conscious.

I don’t know what to do with what I watched. There’s no angle on this, no way to make it digestible. It just reminds you how close everything is to the edge, how fast it all can go.