Eminent drug expert reveals how popular combination of street drugs can turn vulnerable Americans into CANNIBALS – as California man is arrested after eating a severed HUMAN LEG in broad daylight

Images of a man gnawing on a severed human leg on the side of a busy street in broad daylight shocked the country this week, prompting speculation that the national drug crisis was to blame.

Video taken in Wasco, California, shows 27-year-old Rosendo Tellez picking up the leg, apparently biting it and then waving it on the sidewalk before police arrived.

Full arrest details are not yet available, but the internet is full of theories about the possible involvement of drugs that currently dominate the illicit drug supply, particularly xylazine and fentanyl.

Forensic toxicologist Dr. Bruce Goldberger, who worked with police on the two gruesome cases in Florida involving deranged people eating the faces of others, told DailyMail.com that he understood the instinct to suspect those drugs.

But he said meth, crack cocaine or bath salts would actually be the most likely culprits, since stimulants can induce a powerful psychosis, or a total disconnect from reality, while other drugs such as fentanyl, a sedative, cannot. .

However, when fentanyl is combined with other drugs, it can increase their effects.

Rosendo Tellez was seen walking down the street, waving the limp, severed leg and carrying it by the foot

According to Dr. Goldberger, Tellez’s cannibalistic behavior is not “characterized in the medical literature.” This is so unusual, so anomalous, that it is not something that can easily be studied.”

He added: ‘Sometimes when you hear about these cases you immediately think whether there was a drug or drugs involved.’

For example, stimulants, such as methamphetamine or crack cocaine, are the most likely class of drugs, Dr. Goldberger said.

Bath salts, a type of stimulant drug that people snort, smoke or inject, is now infamous for its links to two deranged attacks in which people ate the faces of others.

Dr. Goldberger told DailyMail.com that in a psychotic state, eating other people’s flesh may be seen as necessary for self-defense or survival if the person is convinced they will otherwise starve.

In this altered state of mind, the neurotransmitter dopamine, responsible for rewarding survival-enhancing behaviors such as eating, can worsen psychotic delusions.

Because of their effects on dopamine levels, stimulants are likely to cause psychosis, a condition in which a person becomes divorced from reality and prone to disturbed or violent behavior, potentially escalating to cannibalism, he said.

Stimulants also drastically affect the user’s judgment, making them more impulsive and uninhibited, creating a state of hyper-aggression that can extend to violence.

Rosendo Tellez was arrested for removing human remains from the scene of an Amtrak crash earlier that day that struck and killed one person, as well as one count of possession of controlled substance paraphernalia and one misdemeanor count of violating probation, according to arrest records .

The grim footage was captured by nearby construction worker Jose Ibarra, who said: “From the video we have, it’s clear he started chewing his leg and stuff.”

Tellez was homeless at the time of his arrest and had at least a half-dozen other charges on his record, mostly for drug and alcohol-related crimes.

At the same time, Dr. Goldberger said it was also likely that Tellez was not using drugs but was in fact seriously and violently mentally ill.

He said: ‘In the cases I know of, there are no drugs involved. It was underlying behavior that led to cannibalism not related to any drug(s).’

One of those cases involved 31-year-old Rudy Eugene in Miami, who tore off chunks of 65-year-old Ronald Poppo’s face. Eugene, a diagnosed schizophrenic, was later found to have used marijuana, not bath salts, as was widely believed when the event made national headlines.

Dr. Goldberger said the marijuana in his system was “nothing significant or important” in terms of affecting his behavior.

The other was that of Austin Harrouff, a student at Florida State University who, at the age of 19, murdered a couple and ate one of their faces. He was found incompetent to stand trial by reason of insanity.

Dr. Goldberger said, “There’s been a lot of testing done by the state, the FBI, over the course of a few years because drugs evolve over time. There could be drugs in someone’s blood today that we’ve never seen before.”

He emphasized that fentanyl and xylazine would not have caused the behavior shown in Ibarra’s viral video. These medications ‘do not cause psychosis.’

While Mr. Tellez’s toxicology report has not yet been provided, its contents may ultimately yield few answers.

Standard drug tests in prisons look for standard drugs, including opioids, cocaine, ecstasy and other stimulants. But they won’t pick up other designer drugs that can play a role in causing psychosis, such as spices, bath salts, synthetic marijuana, or K2.