About a decade ago, Russian doctors began to notice strange wounds on the bodies of some drug addictspatches of flesh turning dark and scaly, like a crocodilesin the hospitals of Siberia and the Russian Far East.It didnt take them long to discover the cause: the patients had begun injecting a new drug they called, predictably, krokodil. (Some accounts suggest the name was derived from one of the drugs precursor chemicals, alpha-chlorocodide.)Videos showing the effects of the flesh-eating drugchristened desomorphine when it was invented for medical use in 1932quickly went viral online. There are now alarming stories that the monster could be at large in the U.S.An addict can cook up krokodil using ingredients and tools bought from the local pharmacy and hardware store. The active ingredient, codeine, is a mild opiate sold over the counter in many countries. The resulta murky yellow liquid with an acrid stinkmimics the effect of heroin at a fraction of the cost. In Europe, for example, a dose of krokodil costs just a few dollars, compared with about $20 for a hit of heroin.But addicts pay dearly for krokodils cheap high. Wherever on the body a user injects the drug, blood vessels burst and surrounding tissue dies, sometimes falling off the bone in chunks.That side effect has earned krokodil its other nickname: the zombie drug. The typical life span of an addict is just two or three years. At its peak 2011 year, krokodil use had spread to as many as a million addicts in Russia. The monster has quickly crossed the ocean. loss of happiness is the loss of freedom of choice. Consider.