Why we are just getting too good at pleasure
Photo by Viktoriya on Unsplash
The painkiller Fentanyl – the ‘one hundred times stronger than heroin’ wonder drug – has become a massive problem in the US. Videos of addicts lolling over themselves, bodies bent forward like human rubber bands, have become cruel internet memes shared millions of times. The neighbourhood of Kensington in Philadelphia has now become world famous for these videos and one can’t help wondering how we got to this. And there was me thinking heroin was lethal. How quaintly 20th Century. The drug has even become the centrepiece of Donald Trump’s 2025 tariff wars with Canada, with his insistence that supposed flows of the drug from the Canadian border be stopped, or else he will invade the country and have JD Vance personally force-feed chlorinated chicken to Canadian children .