There is a new synthetic opioid drug coming to the U.S. It’s called cychlorphine, which sounds a little like “psychorphine,” and it’s definitely destroying people’s minds.

San Francisco recorded their first cychlorphine fatality in April of this year. The individual purchased what they thought was a pharmaceutical opioid. Instead, the pill they purchased contained a new synthetic opioid, many times more potent than fentanyl.

Cychlorphine shows up most frequently as a counterfeit version of Xanax, Percocet, Dilaudid, and OxyContin, say authorities. KGO San Francisco reports that the drug first came to the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2024. It can be sold in powder form or pill form, and is usually mixed with other drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a warning about cychlorphine in May of this year. They noted that “studies in mice have shown that cychlorphine causes profound respiration and cardiovascular depression at lower doses than fentanyl.”

UNODC reported there have been 78 global fatalities due to cychlorphine since 2024, and 182 drug seizures by law enforcement.

Due to its potency, cychlorphine can quickly result in an overdose. It cannot be detected with test strips used to test for fentanyl or standard urine tests. Narcan (naloxone) is effective against a cychlorphine overdose, but it requires a substantially larger dose.

The rapid pace at which cychlorphine is being substituted for other synthetic opioids as fentanyl supply chains have been disrupted is frightening. The drug has decimated Estonia, according to The New York Times.

Estonia has been ahead of the U.S. in a wave of fentanyl addiction and recovery. In 2002, it had the highest fentanyl death rate in Europe. By 2018, overdose deaths had declined by 70%, and the country thought it had addiction whipped.

Then came waves of synthetic opioids:

The first new drugs to arrive, known as nitazenes, sent mortality rates skyrocketing again, proving even more addictive and harder to treat or quit. New varieties keep popping up, too, some more than 40 times stronger than fentanyl.

Nitazines are opioid analgesics developed in the 1950s but never brought to market due to their potency and addictive properties. Nitazines are “hundreds to thousands fold more potent than morphine and other opioids and tenfold more potent than fentanyl,” according to a narrative review in the journal Cureus. They first showed up in a toxicology exam in 2019 in — you guessed it — Estonia.

The Times reports that “Nitazenes are already believed to have caused more than 1,000 deaths across Britain.” Then came cychlorphine. Since the beginning of this year, the drug has been “killing even more people than nitazenes” in Estonia, reports The Times, adding:

In dozens of interviews with users and treatment specialists in Estonia, everyone described a decades-long onslaught of debilitating new drugs that keep getting more destructive and harder to fight.

The biggest problem with the new synthetic opioids is that they can be produced in a lab, anywhere. In 2025, Estonian police busted one supplier with 1.6 kilograms of cychlorphine, “enough to cause eight million overdoses.”

It’s not just cychlorphine, either. UNODC reports:

More than 1,460 new psychoactive substances have been reported in more than 150 countries and territories across the world, a vast majority in the last decade.

There’s not much more we can do at this point than sound the alarm about cychlorphine, just as someone first noticed fentanyl in 2002 as supply lines for natural opioids from Afghanistan were interrupted. Now, as supply lines for fentanyl have been disrupted, the new monster drugs coming here are 10 times worse.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published July 13, 2026.

Sources:

“San Francisco records 1st overdose death caused by new deadly opioid cychlorphine,” KGO San Francisco, April 25, 2026.

“The emerging threat of cychlorphine: A new synthetic opioid raising concerns globally for public health,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), May 14, 2026.

“Estonia Won the War on Fentanyl. What Came Next Was Even Worse.,” The New York Times, July 7, 2026.

“Old Drugs and New Challenges: A Narrative Review of Nitazenes,” Cureus, June 21, 2023.

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