“Krokodil recipe” and “how to make krokodil” are being searched on Google after the drug reportedly hit the U.S. The flesh-eating drug has been in Russia for nearly a decade, and now it’s rumored to be in Arizona, Illinois and New York. 
 
 [Click here to see pictures of krokodil. Warning: Extremely graphic photos. Viewer discretion advised.] 
 
 I’ve been writing about krokodil since I first read about it nearly a year ago. As if heroin wasn’t scary enough, people started to mix up their own desomorphine using toxins to create krokodil, or “crocodile,” as it’s also known. It was frightening the drug was pretty much rampant in Russia, but it’s become even more terrifying now that it’s reportedly in several U.S. states. 
 
 The drug’s name is derived from the greenish, scaly sores that develop close to the injection sites on its users. According to media reports, it can rot all the flesh off a limb, such as an arm or a leg, and expose the bone. It’s also been reported the life expectancy of a person who begins abusing krokodil is two to three years. Some even refer to it as the drug that turns people into zombies. 
 
 When most people hear krokodil is essentially a drug that eats people, some wonder why anyone would ever get near the stuff, but others use the Google search terms “crocodile drug” and “krokodil” not to discover why someone would use it but to find out how to make it. 
 
 If one were to go to the Google Search page and slowly type “krokodil,” then “krokodil recipe” would among the first things that comes up via the autofill feature. 
 
 Naturally, I’m not going to mention the toxins that addicts use to mix up their desomorphine. I have done it in previous articles, and some people ridiculed me for doing so. However, it’s not that I’m changing how or what I write because of what others might say -- I just don’t want anyone figuring out the recipe because of something I wrote. 
 
 For those who are curious as to why anyone would take krokodil, as opposed to how to make it, there’s a pretty telling quote from a 2011 article that appeared in the Independent where an addict talks about his choice to use the deadly substance. “You can feel how disgusting it is when you’re doing it,” the addict told the news site. “You’re dreaming of heroin, of something that feels clean and not like poison. But you can’t afford it, so you keep doing the krokodil. Until you die.” 
 
 Meanwhile, none of the alleged cares of krokodil use in Arizona, Illinois and New York have been confirmed. ||||| Last year's death of an Oklahoma man may have been related to Krokodil. 
 
 Getty Images 
 
 Krokodil, the skin-eating drug, may have claimed its first U.S. victim. The heroin-like drug, which originated in Russia began cropping up in the U.S. last month and has been found in Utah, Arizona and Illinois recently. 
 
 The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is investigating the deaths of two Oklahoma men who are linked to the drug, KSWO reported. One of those men is 33-year-old Justin McGree, who died last year. McGee’s friend Chelle Fancher said McGee had taken Krokodil. 
 
 “(His) skin was missing,” she told KOCO Oklahoma City. “The doctors say it ate him from the inside out. It wasn’t until the next day that they told us that is was Krokodil meth.” 
 
 The drug is an opiate, but like meth is made from crude materials that are readily available, such as gasoline. If the deaths are connected to Krokodil, the drug may have been in the U.S. earlier than authorities have suspected.
– Krokodil—the Russian street drug with effects so horrific it makes meth look almost wholesome—may have already killed at least one person in the US, Time reports. A close friend of a man who died from drug abuse in the state last year said he had been using the drug, made from codeine mixed with ingredients like gasoline, and it "ate him from the inside out." Users of the heroin-like drug develop scaly green sores near injection sites, and in some cases, the flesh rots away to the bone. An Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman, however, says there is no proof the drug has reached the state. "We see IV drug users with horrible infections on a daily basis," he tells the Huffington Post. "Infections from bacteria and dirty needles—that doesn't mean it's" the Russian drug, he says. There have also been unconfirmed reports of the drug surfacing in Arizona, Illinois, and New York, along with a rise in Google searches on how to make it, the International Business Times reports.