Drug Flakka instantly addictive: 'Zombies crawl through the streets screaming and convulsing'

Flakka? Don't even think about it. That much is clear if you watch even one episode of Tygo in the Flakka . Actor Gernandt's new TV series is tough, confrontational, and above all, very clear: this drug isn't called the zombie drug for nothing.

You may have seen videos of users of the designer drug Flakka online (designer, according to an expert in the documentary, means "made in a laboratory"), but you've never met such people in real life. Tygo Gernandt has. He says: "It starts with one hit, it ends in total madness. I've seen videos of zombies crawling down the street, screaming and convulsing."

Gernandt delved into the world of zombie drugs for four episodes of the EO program, airing today. Metro watched the first episode for the television program "Blik op de Buis" (Looking at the Tube). In the Netherlands, this world is primarily set in North Brabant and Zeeland. Police in the southern Netherlands received the first reports of "trouble" involving addicts in 2018; by 2024, officers had already been called to over five hundred incidents.

The danger of Flakka, which you can smoke, snort, inject, or swallow? It's so addictive that you're instantly hooked. Remco tells Gernandt. He lives in a sort of hut in the bushes and is the father of three children he never sees: "I'd only been clean for seven months and took one puff of Flakka. That wasn't good. The drug says: come here."

Tygo Gernandt previously astonished TV viewers with his series "Tygo on GHB ." He also created a series about psychiatry. Now he wants to show "how something that starts with an innocent joint or pill can end in complete devastation. And yet... there's almost always hope and a fighting spirit in the people I meet." We haven't seen the latter group in the first episode, far from it. You mainly see severely addicted people, contact with police officers, and experts who explain what Flakka is and what it does. Interesting questions, Gernandt finds, but in the coming weeks he also hopes to answer how to get rid of it.

"I know how important a new beginning can be," says the actor. He's not referring to an accusation from his ex of inappropriate behavior . Gernandt, now in his fifties, makes no bones about his own struggles with alcohol and drug addiction (particularly cocaine). As an expert by experience, he now visits (former) Flakka users on television.

His first encounter with a young couple in Vlissingen, Gerben and Maria, is telling. He's still quite responsive, she's completely out of touch, completely confused, and anxious. Maria is pretty and smart ("she has a bachelor's degree in medicine," her boyfriend says). Knowing this only makes the scene all the sadder.

A little later, the program maker meets Marco, another father who isn't allowed to see his child. He looks reasonably well for someone who smokes Flakka constantly. That's what he mainly does: smoke and sit on a bench. He doesn't convulse, doesn't see ghosts, and doesn't have panic attacks. At most, he has fits of laughter. Yet, his situation is more than sad, and he's "actually waiting for the end": "It doesn't matter anyway."

Back at Maria's, there's more unintelligible gibberish. Tygo Gernandt manages to make out something once: "You're coming to save me?" Phew...

Tygo in de Flakka can be seen from tonight (October 1st) four times on Wednesdays at 9.25 pm on NPO 3. You can watch it again via NPO Start .

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