Editor’s Note: This piece is meant for educational purposes only—to describe this drug, explain its effects, tell its history and show its presence today on the dark web.

Aprofene (Taren) is a pharmaceutical preparation based on anticholinergic Aprofene. In medicine, it was mostly used as an antidote to organophosphorus compounds.

In addition, Aprofene proved its efficiency in treating stomach ulcers, vasospasms and abdomen spasms.

The drug was officially included in an army first aid kit, but in 1998 the active compound was listed as a controlled psychotropic substance, because of its peculiar side effects, beloved by many people.

Aprofene was necessarily added to an army individual medicine kit as it detoxifies poisonous organophosphorus compounds. However, when it blocks harmful effects of these compounds, Aprofene produces strange visual effects.

In USSR, it was quite easy to find Aprofene because it was given to each soldier. After the prohibition, one could retrieve pills in abandoned military storages or buy them from drug dealers.

Nowadays, Taren is not commonly used due to its senseless, ruthless and very specific effect. Though, old-school psychonauts often recall the drug with a feeling of nostalgia to that Soviet time.

Aprofene still has medical application for easing spasms and treating gastrointestinal tract diseases; that is why it is available for recreational use in Russia. Moreover, there is evidence stating that you can still find Aprofene stocks in military storages. So, if you are a bit of a stalker, you can take your chance.

Trip Reports and Side Effects

The main Aprofene side effect is extreme thirst, along with nausea, urinary problems, constipation, blurred vision, toxicosis, fever and drowsiness.

Tripping on Taren gives a user sensation of the reality, even though experience itself is fictive. Under the influence of this compound, people often talk to inanimate objects, show insane behavior and remember nothing about it afterward.

Most visions take place because of existing eye problems, such as nearsightedness. Also, a person may see flashes of light, feel “adhesion” to the ground, followed by exaggerated sense of height, weight and loss of short-term memory. Paranoia, anxiety, panic and complete misunderstanding of what is happening are the major factors leading to bad trips.

Here are some short trip reports:

1. Taren frightens. I get to only black worlds, literally in a pit or hell. I can never forget one trip, when me and my friend Aleksey were walking across a forest, hysterically laughing with horror, and watching our ears growing up to the size of elephants’ ones. We had sharp and long noses and huge smiles, filled with hundreds of shark teeth. We had better get out of that wood.


2. I remember Aprofene. It is an evil thing. After taking it, I climbed a tree and was calling pigeons to peck corn.


3. The effect was always the same—I was hazy, had strong hallucinations and chatted to something dead.


4. The problem is not in hallucinations; yes, they are terrifying, but give me a lot to think about. But instead of yourself, there appears to be some other person and that is the most horrible experience. Every 10 minutes, this strange being hides in a bathroom and tries to get out through the wall. Thereafter, the creature almost tears off the thumb of the right hand, pinching it with a door. Why? I do not have a clue.

The comments prove that psychonauts consider Taren to be not a noble substance to trip. The question is whether it is worth taking or not.

Aprofene’s effects are often compared to Datura, which is reviewed unflatteringly as well. In two words, Taren’s trip can be described as “crazy and weird.”

Even today, the drug is available on the dark web for those who are into such trips, or maybe wishing to feel the taste of Soviet psychedelics—bitter, hardcore and odd.

One of the Rarest Drugs

Aprofene went out of production in 1987, and that is why all Taren sold on the market is taken from old first aid kits. The offer is quite limited—on the dark web, we managed to find only one vendor selling pills on Hydra Market.

One pill is fairly cheap, costing around $10; but it is sold only in Krasnoyarsk. So, if you decided to trip on Taren, you have to spend $20 on the drug itself, plus traveling costs.

Piles of needle-ridden corpses bear silent witness to an ever-increasing number of deaths caused by overdosing on synthetic opioid drugs.

The problem is global in scope. Experts say the solution requires cooperation around the world.

During the U.N. meeting about narcotics, the United States took a leading role in illustrating the problem and motivated a consensus among the attendees. The primary focus was on fentanyl and its extended family of new opioids.

U.N. Mobilizes To Meet The Challenge Head On

A key point that was brought up was how darknet markets make it easier than ever to buy and sell dangerous drugs.

The interesting thing about the new synthetic opioids is the quantity of the product that is traded between individual buyer and seller—a few milligrams per transaction being sold in some cases. Such practices make it extremely difficult for law enforcement to track.

Multiple international state agencies are now highly aware of the world-spanning problem, and joint operations between them are being organized.

This speaks to the great potency of the synthesized opioids. One called carfentanil is stronger than morphine by 10,000 times.

Numerous similar types of drugs don’t even come with a name, known only by their scientific chemical makeup. The synthetic nature of the new drugs creates difficulties for international drug control laws to be employed against the substances.

In a unanimous resolution, the members of the U.N. committee voted to control fentanyl as well as five other opioid analogs. With this done, 186 countries will be required to institute domestic oversight and monitoring initiatives that will specifically target harmful opioids.

This is only the beginning—more is being pushed out, mostly directed from the U.S. Their agenda includes accelerating the control of opioid production, pushing countries to voluntarily cooperate with information-sharing on the trafficking and use trends, strengthen the ability for law enforcement to curb the selling online and to stop illicit shipments from being delivered.

International Narcotics Control Board Join with Universal Postal Union

The INCB and the UPU are currently working together by sharing information and refining international shipping arrangements. The president of the INCB, Dr. Viroj Sumyai, has stated an understanding of the growing technological changes that help drive synthetic opioid sales abroad.

Ambassador Bishar Abdirahman Hussein, representing the UPU, has said he looks forward to working closely with the INBC to combat toxic opioid trafficking. Living in a healthy world is a chief concern of the ambassador.

Both agencies are planning and implementing new interdiction techniques having to do with nullifying the shipping of contraband using the darknet.

Plague & Death, War & Famine Had Scheduling Issues

The opioid crisis is a primary cause for the panic-striking at the U.N. today.

The crisis was known even before October 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump declared it a national health emergency.

Hundreds of thousands of people were prescribed substances such as fentanyl by doctors for acute and chronic pain.

Mass prescriptions were filled at the behest of big pharma, which turned a great profit off selling the opioid drugs.

The problem was that the drugs were highly addictive, more addictive than morphine even. When the prescriptions ran out for patients, they were left with a debilitating addiction.

Symptoms of the addiction included poor coordination, chronic drowsiness, shallow or slow breathing rate, nausea and other severe conditions.

It would seem that people had little choice but to turn to the black market in order to self-medicate. Heroin laced with synthetic opioids saw a large rise in sales. Deaths caused by overdose saw a massive increase at the same time.

Actions against those thoughts responsible are underway around the world. A lawsuit brought against big pharma by the state of Delaware has been kept in-house despite being pressed to be heard in the federal court for the time being.

Criminal Or Victim, a Duality

Reading the U.N. International Drug Control Conventions from 1961, one can tell from the opening in resolution III that there was recognition by the participants that drug addiction was often a symptom of poverty, which should be seen as much a disease as a crime.

As time moved on, more focus was given to tracking drug smugglers and fighting a “War on Drugs” at a worldwide level.

Much of the groundwork for this attitude change was laid in the early 1980’s headed by leaders such as U.S. President Ronald Regan and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Yet even in the 1961 convention, the control of poppies and poppy straw was strictly under international treaties. Poppies are the primary ingredient in opium, a highly addictive numbing agent that plagued China in the past, much the same way synthetic opioids plague the world today.

Many countries invoke punitive justice against dealers and addicts. Some, such as Russia, Indonesia, China and the Philippines skip the justice part and simply execute many drug offenders found. The fact that countries which murder caught drug users are allowed to make use of U.N. resources cannot be called progress. However, such travesties must be upheld in the world due to the U.N.’s focus on cooperation and the desire to see an end to epidemics that have seen tens of thousands killed by overdoses.

A South American Approach

A comprehensive report from the Center for Legal and Social Studies in ArgentinaTop of FormBottom of Form found that harsh prohibitionist policies had an extremely detrimental effect on Latin countries. Human rights violations increased as more military action took place.

In 2016, Columbia, Mexico, and Guatemala had their request heard for a U.N. meeting on the world drug problem (UNGASS). Questions as to the effectiveness of the three international drug control conventions were raised and many believed that the “War on Drugs” approach does more harm than good. Most Latin American countries agreed that a “people, not substances” type of arrangement should be the way things are done.

The leaders in favor of reform were met with frustration as the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) held that the three drug control conventions were cornerstones to their international policy. The UNODC argued that the War on Drugs was not a failure and was still in the process of working.

Not much was lost for Latin America. Mexico and other countries continued to pursue legalization for benign drugs such as marijuana, even for recreational use.

Heart Of Darkness

Transnational pharmaceutical companies sold massive amounts of highly addictive substances to be used by patients all around the world.

Those patients were cut off and made to go to the black market to get relief; the ones that did not overdose from prescribed medication anyway.

Black markets have little to no oversight of the products sold, so anyone buying off of them is always at risk. Additionally to this point, even if what is bought is legitimate, the person buying it is usually not a licensed medical professional. Mistakes in dosage are a given in this situation.

As this becomes more of a problem, concerned countries call for cooperation to crack down on black markets with draconian U.N. laws already in place.

It’s possible certain countries will use this as an excuse to create more intrusive surveillance policies in the future.

Some countries seem not to want anything to do with the INCB and may resist, however, they will be pressured by larger states not to, namely the U.S. who seems to be the leading voice in this.

It will be fascinating to see how things play out from here.

A Williston, North Dakota man named Norman Staley was found dead in his home late last year, and it has now been revealed that the immediate cause of death was heart failure brought about by an enlarged heart, primarily caused by the use of anabolic steroids.

Three days after Stanley’s death in November 2017, a mysterious package arrived at the home of his mother, Barbara Fisher.

It was forwarded from Stanley’s Grand Junction home. The package was labeled “sunscreen” and had been sourced from Ukraine to Stanley’s address.

Upon examining the content of the package, Fisher found 200 pills which looked like ecstasy. She immediately alerted law enforcement.

Upon investigation, police were able to find that Stanley had a medical condition that made his doctor prescribe him testosterone, which he was taking twice a week.

In a bid to save money, he decided to forego the pharmacy and use the dark web as a source of his steroids. Little did he know that this decision would cost him his life.

The pills were tested and were found not to be an illegal substance. However, a police spokesperson said that the pills would be sent to Colorado Bureau of Investigation if any criminal investigation will be involved.

Anabolic Steroids

Anabolic steroids, the drugs Stanley had been using around the time of his death, are synthetic variations of testosterone that can be prescribed to treat hormonal issues and certain diseases which cause muscle loss, like delayed puberty and cancer respectively.

Like most drugs, anabolic steroids can be abused. Bodybuilders and athletes use them to enhance their physical appearance and improve their performance.

Abusers of the drug can take it in ways that limit the side effects while maximizing the benefits.

According to a report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, such ways include cycling; which means using the drug while having pause periods in between its usage, pyramiding; which involves increasing its intake gradually, reaching optimum amounts the steadily getting off it and lastly stacking; which is combining a number of steroids.

Unlike other drugs, anabolic steroids do not have the same short-term effects; they don’t cause the “high” that often leads to the use of other drugs.

However, long-term usage can have significant effects on the brain chemicals and pathways that cause that high. The outcome may be mood and behavioral changes.

Short-term effects are mental health problems such as paranoia and impaired judgment. Long-term effects are different for men and women, but the general ones are liver damage, kidney problems or failure, increased blood cholesterol, high blood pressure and an enlarged heart, which is what’s attributed to the November 2017 death of Norman Stanley.

Mourning Mother

Whenever a person dies, those who are closest to him or she feels the effects of the loss most, especially the immediate family.

Barbara Fisher was no exception. Her sorrow was apparent. The death of her son hurt her deeply and opened up her eyes to things she was not aware of.

She said that were it not for her son’s death, she would never have known about the dark web. Like most people her age, she is ignorant of what goes on in the dark web yet she is and can be further affected by it.

Fisher added that today’s young individuals are technologically savvy and have learned to access banned substances such as drugs remotely.

The world has taken significant strides technologically and young minds are able to keep up. However, it has come with its own challenges, such as more young drug dealers on the dark web and increased cybercrime.

In a final statement, Fisher said she would not want any other family to face what she was going through, and pledged to aid in the fight against drug abuse, even if it means getting one drug of the street/market to save a life.

Law Enforcement Reaction

Megan Terlecky, the spokesperson for Mesa County Sheriff’s Department, said that getting over-the-counter or prescription drugs from unknown sources is dangerous as one cannot be sure of what he or she is getting.

The dark web has developed such deep roots in the drug trade that trusted dark web vendors and customers echo the same sentiment.

For instance, a man from Townsville, Australia who was recently arrested for buying drugs on the dark web, informed the court that he only chose to make the purchase online in order to avoid being duped into buying fake drugs from sketchy dealers.

The man, named Bruno Talora, was a drug dealer, and when drug dealers are cautious of buying drugs from questionable vendors, it shows how much other populations should also be careful of purchasing drugs on the dark web.

Illegal activities on the dark web have been on the rise since its inception.

Law enforcement faces a constant challenge of drug trafficking on the dark web.

It is quite hard to locate buyers and sellers when their identities are anonymous, leaving officers to depend on sometimes unreliable sources of information.

This is why the Department of Justice has recently formed a task force to counter such activity. Though they were not able to prevent the death of Stanley, it is a positive thing that the agency is trying to find ways to counter such crime.

Several groups of people have been apprehended during a major drug trafficking swoop in Michigan and the opioid-riddled state of West Virginia.

United States Attorney Mike Stuart, who represents the region’s southern district, made some remarks concerning the dire state of West Virginia’s drug problem.

According to his comments, the state suffers an opioid epidemic whose scale stinks to the high heavens. This reality has been aggravated by an inflow of narcotics from Detroit.

Stuart intimated that the drug enforcement operation involved the efforts of hundreds of officers of the federal, state and local caliber.

This sweep focused on the apprehension of about 100 individuals, which would go a long way in disrupting an otherwise elaborate distribution network.

To this effect, about 30 persons were arrested in West Virginia’s second-largest city. Among the arrested people included drug ring leaders that were situated in Huntington and Detroit.

These criminals represented an established drug organization that had been doing business in Huntington for over a decade.

Furthermore, Stuart revealed that the operation—referred to as Project Huntington and Operation Saigon Sunset—was long-sighted in design since it targeted drug trafficking rings in Huntington instead of the regular peddlers and drug junkies.

This operation proved to be successful following the bust of colossal amounts of fentanyl, heroin and cocaine prior to the arrests.

Reportedly, the amount of fentanyl seized by law enforcement officers was sufficient to cause 250,000 human deaths.

Fentanyl is an exceedingly potent synthetic opioid that is often coupled with heroin. The drug is typically sourced from the dark web through established marketplaces.

According to United States judicial officers, the majority of fentanyl analogs that find their way into U.S. soil are transported via express shipping systems and the mail service.

The state of West Virginia has been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the main sources of drug overdose-related deaths.

Particularly, Cabell County suffers a drug epidemic that has seen the inception of a severe public health crisis in most parts of Huntington.

Just to highlight this problem, an August 2016 drug incident was reported to have involved opioid overdoses of 14 people within a five-hour time frame.

Opioids: The Dawn of a Public Health Crisis

A 2017 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) marked the estimated cost of the opioid crisis to be half a trillion dollars in 2015 alone.

This statistic accounted for about 3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), a figure that is reportedly six times greater than previous estimates regarding the crisis.

In the same year, more than 30,000 Americans succumbed to drug overdoses that were linked to opioids.

The CEA revealed that previous economic costs had been greatly underestimated by undervaluing deaths resulting from the drug overdose.

The 2015 estimates were thus achieved following a careful analysis of conventional economic determinants for valuing population health.

The Trump administration acknowledged the opioid crisis as a public health emergency in October 2017. In an address, the U.S. President expressed strong views against the drug vice and declared his commitment to ensuring that the crisis is dealt with accordingly.

He remarked that there was an important need to liberate American communities from the shackles of drug addiction.

Shortly thereafter, the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction provided a report with key recommendations on suitable methodologies for bringing the opioid crisis to a halt.

Among the ideas presented in the paper included the advancement of medical interventions in treating drug addicts, the expansion of drug courts in the U.S. and the refinement of civic education on matters concerning drug abuse.

Current Interventions

The U.S. government has established various strategies in battling the opioid crisis. Law enforcement has been the key method of containing an emergency that threatens to defile the American social fiber.

This has been seen through numerous cases of darknet market takedowns and the arrest of drug-related criminal rings.

Perhaps the most significant government intervention has been the formation of the Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement (J-CODE) taskforce in January 2018.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the announcement concerning the resource that would augment the efforts of federal law enforcement agencies to target opioid sales in the country. In a statement, he warned criminals hiding behind the veil of the darknet and placed them on notice concerning the J-CODE’s commitment to raiding their hideouts.

Sessions revealed that U.S. law enforcement had already breached darknet criminal networks, and is ambitious in their quest to bring the criminals to justice.

Additionally, he echoed that the government had stepped up its investment in fighting the opioid crisis that has been considered to be the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history. This has been combined with a joint effort between the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Department of Justice in tackling the looming epidemic.

The J-CODE team is expected to join the onslaught against online marketplaces that support the sale of banned substances. It will advance the FBI’s objective of destroying online opioid drug rings that have wreaked havoc in American society.

The first step has been the assignment of numerous special agents and intelligence officers to the J-CODE outfit. This way, the government believes that the country will experience an overall decrease in drug addiction and the associated drug-related deaths.

Certainly, the formation of the J-CODE team can be considered to be the outgrowth of past government-level efforts to tackle the opioid crisis. Attorney General Sessions had been a key figure in the 2017 takedown of AlphaBay, one of the most popular darknet markets at the time of its seizure.

Sessions had convened a press conference to announce the key milestone in the fight against dark web-sourced drugs. In his remarks, he declared that AlphaBay’s shutdown was just but the beginning of a dedicated effort by the Department of Justice to restore stability in the American public.

He promised that his department will continue to target the darknet marketplaces to ensure that drug criminals lack a place to engage in their illegal business.

A month later, Sessions directed the establishment of a data analytics program dubbed the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, which was tasked with investigating healthcare fraud tied to opioids.

To this effect, Sessions chose prosecutors to select hotspot areas that are characterized by the prevalence of opioid abuse.

Moving on, U.S. lawmakers have also been vocal concerning the need for the government to solve the opioid crisis once and for all. The legislators have created a strategy that aims to arrest the rising drug-related death toll in the country and advance prospects of treating opioid addicts.

The mechanism involves the compelling of drug manufacturers to cover the costs incurred in solving the drug crisis.

About 15 states have moved to impose taxes on prescription painkillers, and the proceeds would be channeled to programs designed to treat opioid abuse and prevent cases of drug addiction.

In the state of Montana, Senator Roger Webb believes that this strategy will go a long way in enforcing responsibility in the pharmaceutical industry by holding drug manufacturers accountable for the drug crisis in the country.

In defense, drug manufacturers and their distributors have come out to argue against the practicality of this resolution. In their view, imposing taxes on prescription drugs will only make healthcare unaffordable to many Americans.

Regarding this, taxpayers and patients will bear the bulk of economic implications that would arise from the implementation of the strategy.

Similarly, John Parker, a spokesperson for the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, warned that the move by U.S. legislators will only threaten the lives of legitimate patients and individuals suffering from terminal illnesses—they will not be able to access necessary prescriptions accordingly.

Opinion: What More Needs to Be Done?

At this point in time, the opioid epidemic can only be dealt with through appropriate budget allocations and subsequent funding.

Funds are necessary for financing the various facets forming the fight against the U.S. drug crisis.

First, enough money must be made available for treatment programs that target community healing and rehabilitation.

Funds should also be directed towards capacity building in the health sector and the recruitment of additional people to take part in the fight against the current epidemic.

The personnel should be distributed across all U.S. cities and states and be assigned to well-equipped health institutions.

Arguably, the government should also prioritize the lives of persons using prescription opioids for non-medical reasons.

This translates to an increased availability of naloxone in American communities. Naloxone is a drug used to reverse the effects of opioid overdose. Unfortunately, this antidote is rather expensive.

This truth was once highlighted by Leana Wen, Baltimore’s Health Commissioner, who revealed the monumental cost of administering the drug in the area. The drug is about $125, with an auto-injector device that costs thousands of dollars.

This is very costly considering the fact that drug overdose victims typically need several shots of the drug to be revived.

In the case of the highly powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, a large amount of naloxone is required to do the job.

Moreover, law enforcement officers are required to carry naloxone during drug operations. This is usually a precautionary measure in cases where they come in contact with dangerous opioids.