Flakka, a relatively new designer drug that burst onto the scene in 2012, with its epicenter in Florida, claimed the lives of 126 people in 2013 alone and is rapidly spreading to other states throughout the country.
Flakka is an ascending drug because it is cheap and only costs three to five dollars a hit. It is cheaper than heroin and up to 10 times cheaper than ecstasy/molly. This drug – being called “gravel” and “$5 insanity” – is even more dangerous than meth or heroin! Flakka is a synthesized stimulant derived from the khat plant (known as “Catha Edullis”) found in the Middle East and Somalia, and is often laced with other deadly drugs, unbeknownst to is users. Flakka effects have been compared to a fusion of crack cocaine, crystal meth, LSD and PCP. “I was an undercover narcotics detective… I have not seen anything like it,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
Young people are flocking to flakka because it is not only cheap, but offers a sense of euphoria and self-empowerment, while being easily accessible. Young people actually order flakka online and have it delivered to their front doors! It can come in crystalline rock form and can be swallowed or injected, or snorted and vaped in an e-cigarette.
To demonstrate the sharp rise of flakka in California, Brad Lamm, a drug addiction interventionist in Los Angeles, states that while he had never had a single flakka case he received a dozen calls in just the last two months. “The drug takes away all the inhibitions and also erases the body’s ability to clamp down on dopamine and serotonin, so you just feel like you can do anything,” Lamm said. “I think we’re going to see waves of this that are going to be very, very devastating.” (Source)
With flakka’s blockage of one’s God-given neural transmitters the brain is flooded with an unregulated flow of dopamine and serotonin. The result is, after an unnatural amount of chemicals floods one’s body, cells and nerve endings that would typically clean up the problem are inhibited from metabolizing and re-uptaking dopamine and serotonin. This phenomena leads to severely altered states of consciousness known as “excited delirium.” The result is the user becoming extremely vulnerable to paranoia, diabolical hallucinations and suggestive demonic voices.
“‘It’s like a nightmare. I hallucinated and saw clowns and houses turning into clowns. Trees with hair. Things flying around. Dead bodies in the street,’ Tyler Etue said, who went temporarily insane after using the drug and experienced the sensation of demonic possession, ‘It was like a demon inside of me…I didn’t eat or sleep for five days.’” (Source)
Owing to the sensation of “super human strength” and grand illusions, flakka users feel invincible and fall under the delusion that they are God. “I am God! I am God! Burn in Hell! I am light!” screamed one delusional woman at the top of her lungs, while under the drug’s insidious influence in an online video. (Source)
Flakka is similar to PCP or Angel Dust in that its users often experience agitation, rapid heart rate, psychosis, severe hallucinations, super human strength and sudden outbursts of violent aggression, sometimes resulting in death.
Kenneth Crowder
“I feel for the officers who are on patrol and they roll up on someone and they are on flakka and they have superhuman strength,” says DEA special agent Kevin Stanfill, who is spearheading the flakka resistance in Miami Florida, which is currently the “epicenter” of the outbreak. Stanfill said, “When it takes six police officers to hold them down, that’s a problem.”
“We have individuals high on flakka coming up to parents with their kids and trying to take their kids,” Stanfill said. “They’re not just getting high, they’re going out and hurting other people. You don’t see that with a lot of the other drugs like you are with flakka right now.” (Source)
Fox news in Orlando reported:
“A 17-year-old female was arrested at 2:30 in the morning Saturday after police said she jumped through the window of a home on the 1600 block of Sycamore Street in Melbourne, according to her arrest report. The residents of the home say they were terrified after following the incident. The arrest report states that the girl, covered in broken glass and blood, slapped one of the residents of the home, and then ran outside. When police arrived, the report says she charged the officer while screaming, ‘I am God, I am Satan!’ The officer wrote that he backed up at first, but then Tasered her and took her into custody.” (Source)
Flakka is already proving itself a devastating drug to both the users and innocent victims. Flakka’s effects can include wild hallucinations and psychotic breakdowns that lead to indiscriminate violence. Mike Haney admitted after using flakka that he has no memory of what he may have done while on the drug, “I was completely out of my mind. I could have killed somebody. I could have killed myself.” (Source)
One man announced to police that he was high on flakka and that he possessed “super human strength” while trying to break down the front door of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. Some time later, another man by the name of Shanard Neely, was caught on surveillance video seeking to scale the fence surrounding the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and ended up impaling himself on a foot long spike. “He was just dangling there,” said Asst. Fort Lauderdale Fire Chief Tim Heiser. “There was no way he could have gotten off. It was too high up and nothing to actually leverage himself with.” (Source)
“We’re starting to see a rash of cases of a syndrome referred to as excited delirium,” Jim Hall, an epidemiologist at the Center for Applied Research on Substance Use and Health Disparities at Nova Southeastern University, told CBS. “This is where the body goes into hyperthermia, generally a temperature of 105 degrees. The individual becomes psychotic, they often rip off their clothes and run out into the street violently and have an adrenaline-like strength and police are called and it takes four or five officers to restrain them. Then once they are restrained, if they don’t receive immediate medical attention they can die.” (Source)
Khat Plant
Another reason flakka is so dangerous is because in its purest form one can easily overdose from a pill the size of a Tic Tac®! Flakka is also dangerous because it is an amphetamine, and thus highly addictive both physically and mentally. Prospective users need to be warned of its demonic and deadly effects before they begin to experiment and end up hooked. They need to be aware that the first hit is often just the first step down a road that may cost them their life, if not the lives of others.
The reason so many millions of young people are turning to destructive drugs is owing to the breakdown of biblical family values and the eradication of God in our present society. Left without a moral compass – owing to Darwinism, moral relativism and post modernism – millions of young people are left with a moral vacuum devoid of truth, righteousness, purpose, meaning, and God Himself in their lives! God warns us in His Word that we are to be filled with His Holy Spirit and not to fill our bodies with cheap counterfeits like drunkenness:
“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18)
When the masses find that they cannot be satisfied with gateway drugs like marijuana and alcohol, they turn to harder drugs like ecstasy, cocaine, heroin and flakka. God warns in the book of Revelation that such drugs would be prevalent in the last days. Variations of the Greek word “pharmakeia” are used in the bible and especially in the Book of Revelation (Galatians 5:20; Revelation 9:21; 18:23; 21:8; 22:15) and have been translated with words such as sorcery, witchcraft, doping, druggings, etc. The variety of translations point to the fact that such drugs have been historically understood to produce diabolical or demonic effects. While the word pharmakeia can have a range of meanings and various applications, it most certainly relates to drugs which are used to alter one’s normal state of consciousness and illicit spiritual effects.
Satan is able to open portals to human consciousness when human subjects let their defenses down and alter their states of consciousness. This is on reason God warns us to remain sober when resisting the devil:
“Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.” (1 Peter 5:8-9)
There is much evidence beyond this article that Satan is using pharmakeia to great ends, as countless people under the influence of drugs admit demonic oppression and possession and often succumb to Satan’s lie that we can be God (Genesis 3:6).
May God help us to shun the cheap and deceptive counterfeits of the kingdom of darkness and may we find our satisfaction in a loving and abiding relationship with Him through the gospel of Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to set us free from addiction to drugs and other vices. Jesus came to set the captives free:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” (Luke 4:18)
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free… So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:32)
Millions of drug addicts were set free by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ who not only made the universe but died to deliver us from the power and enslavement of death and Satan:
“Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)
Simply turn from the broad road that Jesus warned leads to destruction (Matthew 7:21-23) and call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, who stated in His word:
“AND IT SHALL BE THAT EVERYONE WHO CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.” (Acts 2:21)
God warns us in His word that those who refuse to repent of using illicit drugs and other vices will not inherit His kingdom:
“Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, SORCERY [Greek Pharmakeia], enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19-21)
“But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and SORCERERS [GREEK PHARMAKEUS] and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)
Just after the Lord warns us in the book of Galatians not to indulge of the works of the flesh, including illicit drug use, He immediately informs us of the fruit of the Spirit. May He fill us with His Holy Spirit so we may enjoy the fullness of life that He promises (John 10:10) and the incomparable fruit of His Spirit:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:22-25)
