Veronica about the grief: “I think the heart couldn’t take it in the end” • Worry about new powerful variant
Veronica Nöjd from Luleå has lived most of her life in addiction.
It has been about amphetamines and alcohol, but also opioids, a type of drug that she describes as a drug from hell.
A drug that took her former boyfriend’s life.
Three years ago, Veronica Nöjd’s former boyfriend died of an opioid overdose. Before that, he had been drug-free for several years.
– Simply my better half. He fell back into it. They said he died peacefully, I think the heart just couldn’t take it in the end, says Veronica Nöjd.
The deaths are twice as many as in the early 2000s
In 2023, 822 people died in drug- and drug-related deaths in Sweden. That is slightly less than in 2022, but seen over a twenty-year period, drug-related deaths per year have increased by 56 percent according to the National Board of Health and Welfare’s statistics.
In the vast majority of cases, opioids are one of the main causes.
– They are very overrepresented in deaths and it has to do with the properties of opioids. They can turn on the breathing reflex if you overdose, and if it is combined with other things, the risk increases even more, says Daniel Svensson, National Board of Health and Welfare.
Recently, a new variant of synthetic opioids has established itself on the illegal market in Sweden. Nitazener, a very powerful opioid similar to Fentanyl.
Fentanyl is an opioid that in the mid-2010s took hundreds of lives in Sweden every year. Stricter legislation and convictions against internet sellers helped stop the fentanyl wave in Sweden.
The concern: “Young people get caught up in it”
The fact that Nitazener has now been discovered in several places around the country is worrying.
– They are similar to the fentanyls in that they are very powerful and have a small dose window, and it is very easy to overdose. We have 18 deaths until 2023 with metonitazenes, and two other variants of nitazenes, and the Forensic Medicine Agency has reported that it will continue to increase in 2024, says Daniel Svensson, investigator at the National Board of Health and Welfare.
Veronica is also concerned that more and more people will die as a result of illegal opioids in Sweden.
– In the last four or five years, it has become more common here in Luleå. And it’s very young people who get caught up in it, because it’s so easy to get hold of today, she says.