The Project: Drug fuelling America’s worst-ever crisis

Madeleine Sweet was in her mid-20s and had just finished a law degree, when she was offered a free sample of a powerful drug. It “immediately” took over her life.

Madeleine Sweet was in her mid-20s, and had just finished a law degree, when she became addicted to opioids.

Fentanyl – the powerful painkiller currently fuelling what experts have called America’s worst-ever drug crisis – is 100 times stronger than morphine, and 50 times more potent than heroin.

It’s also cheap, and was easy for Ms Sweet to get on the dark web.

Just two milligrams – about the same weight as two grains of salt – can kill within minutes.

“The first time I ever had fentanyl, I got a gram of it free as a ‘sample’ from this clandestine lab in China,” Ms Sweet said in tonight’s episode of The Project.

“Immediately, I was sold, because once you start using fentanyl, it’s difficult to go back to anything else. Your tolerance gets obliterated. I needed it quicker and I needed it more often.”

Madeleine Sweet was in her mid-20s, and had just finished a law degree, when she became addicted to opioids. Picture: The Project

Asked by host Hamish Macdonald what it’s like when the drug is “in control of you”, Ms Sweet recalled an instance where she woke up in “immense pain” as a result of her usage.

“There was a time when I was brushing my teeth, and I wake up three hours later and I’m in this really weird position, and my legs had been totally cut off from any circulation. I’m bawling. I’m just in immense pain,” she said.

And yet immediately – despite fentanyl being the cause of her distress – she “took another hit”.

After an eventual overdose, Ms Sweet’s mum finally convinced her to get help.

‘Once you start using fentanyl, it’s difficult to go back to anything else.’ Picture: The Project

After an eventual overdose, Ms Sweet’s mother convinced her to seek help. Picture: The Project

But the fact Ms Sweet survived her addiction has fast become the exception, not the rule.

In the US, illicit fentanyl has displaced legally prescribed painkillers as the main cause of overdoses. The death rate is not equivalent to one American overdosing every five minutes, and coupled with Covid-19, it’s driven the nation’s life expectancy down to a 25-year low of 76.4 years.

While Australia has so far avoided a crisis on the same scale as the US, experts warn we’re nowhere near ready to combat an influx of the drug.

Last year, border officials announced a container that arrived in Melbourne in December 2021 held about 28 kilograms of the opioid – equivalent to about 5.5 million potential lethal doses of 2mg each.

It was the largest fentanyl seizure in our nation’s history, and a shipment sizeable enough, Australian Federal Police Commander Kate Ferry told The Project, it could have created a market in Australia. The drug, she added, has the potential to be more addictive than ice.

Australia has so far avoided a crisis on the same scale as the US. Picture: AFP

Australian authorities seized the largest-ever discovery of the deadly opioid fentanyl hidden in December 2021. Picture: AFP

The damage caused by fentanyl is something Sandra McGivern is all too familiar with.

Ms McGivern’s son Angus, an aspiring athlete, was prescribed the opioid “for years” by GPs to treat chronic pain from an injury sustained while playing rugby.

Angus developed a “heavy” addiction to the drug – one that would, in September 2017, end up costing him his life.

Since Angus’ death, real-time prescription monitoring has made it harder for addicts to get their hands on controlled medicines.

Still, in 2020 there were 165 unintentional deaths in Australia involving fentanyl, as well as opioids pethidine and tramadol – an increase of almost 1300 per cent since 2006, when just 12 people died.

“If fentanyl wasn’t available to Angus, there is no doubt he would be alive today,” Ms McGivern said.

Tune into The Project tonight from 6.30pm on 10 and 10 Play for the full story