He was bent at the waist, wobbly and shoeless on grimy pavement at the end of an alley where fires smolder, drug users gather day and night, and death lurks.
Slowly, he made his way across the parking lot behind the Yoshinoya restaurant at Wilshire Boulevard and Alvarado Street. It was not a normal gait, but in MacArthur Park, you see it every day.
The head hangs low. The eyes sink. Fentanyl, over time, attacks muscle and spine, cuts people in half, twists them in knots, and buries them. In 2022, 1,910 fentanyl overdose deaths were recorded in Los Angeles County.
When the man paused in a parking lot, I approached. His face was scarred by a shotgun pattern of blood-red scabs and ulcers. This too is a common sight, and a symptom of fentanyl laced with the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine…