If you take a prescription opioid, it’s important to teach your family and friends how to respond to an overdose. Store the opioids safely where children and others can’t find or access them. It can be difficult to prevent an opioid overdose because you may not know the potency of the substances you’re using. In a hospital setting, healthcare providers order several tests to check for any complications. They may perform other forms of medical care other than naloxone, such as intubation to help with breathing. If you suspect someone may be overdosing, do not leave them alone.
- These symptoms of stimulant overdose can lead to a seizure, stroke, heart attack, or death.
- In most communities, any person can get and carry naloxone on them, not just medical professionals.
- Cannabis has been considered the world’s most-used illicit substance, though it has gained legality in some places.
- The AMA promotes the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.
- He is the medical director of laboratory services at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego and is a board-certified pathologist.
Does fluoxetine cause weight gain?
In many countries there is still limited availability of naloxone even in medical settings, including in ambulances. On the other hand, some countries have already made naloxone available in pharmacies without prescription. Males, people of older age and people with low socio-economic status are at higher risk of opioid overdose than women, people of young age groups and people with higher socio-economic status. People can also die from opioid overdose when they (knowingly or unknowingly) use an opioid in combination with another substance, such as a sedative or stimulant.
How is an opioid overdose diagnosed?
Researchers are still struggling to understand how lifestyle factors, such as prior drug use and stress, as well as genetics and other risk factors, might make people more likely to overdose on these deadly drugs. Some medical treatments for opioid addiction also target opioid receptors. Drugs including buprenorphine are known as partial agonists, which activate opioid receptors to a lesser extent than heroin and other agonists. The middling effect staves off withdrawal and keeps people from turning to the more dangerous heroin or fentanyl.
GME: Council on Medical Education reports & issue briefs
Simultaneously, the last two decades have seen an influx of heroin and synthetic opioids to the black market, making illegal opioids cheap and easy to purchase and fueling the epidemic even further. But actioning this step didn’t https://sober-home.org/ consider the vast number of people already addicted, says Eggleston. Unable to obtain drugs from a doctor, they turned to illegal opioids from elsewhere. Symptoms, treatment, and recovery depend on the specific drug involved.
Fentanyl Overdose Symptoms
People with opioid addiction tend to have high tolerances to opioids, such as oxycodone or heroin. They require high doses of these drugs to experience an overdose. However, fentanyl is between 25 and 50 times stronger than heroin. Hidden in these national statistics are stories of individual people.
Even if you elude death, an overdose can result in permanent damage to your brain and other vital organs. Those who manage to recover without any severe long-term damage to their brain or body should consider themselves very fortunate. In fact, Florida medical examiners, who meet every other month, have noted a drop in the presence of xylazine in drug overdose deaths in 2024. Whether it’s being replaced with something else, however, is unknown. The medication naloxone is used to reverse opioid overdoses and works by attaching to mu-receptors to prevent opioids’ effects. The risk of death from opioid overdose is high, says Dr. Ryan Marino, a medical toxicologist, addiction medicine specialist, emergency physician, and assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
An overdose can be accidental (i.e., you were prescribed a dose of medication, and your body does not handle it as expected), or it may be intentional. Many substances can cause a state of sedation when abused due to how they interact with the central nervous system (CNS). Many systems are regulated by the CNS, which helps explain why overdoses of other substances, such as alcohol and opiates, can result in critical body systems failing. Depending on the type of substance, there are many different symptoms of an overdose. Additionally, there are many other factors that can impact how and when an overdose can occur. Here are some of the most important factors and symptoms to be aware of, as they often require emergency medical intervention.
Nausea and vomiting are common overdose effects, especially for alcohol overdose. It can be dangerous if the person is alone or asleep, as they can choke to death on their vomit. Drugs not properly stored can be accessed by curious kids who are likely to put objects in their mouths.
It’s also impossible to figure out the strength of powder fentanyl on the street. Even if you know the potency, you won’t be able to measure a safe amount of the drug. A deadly dose of fentanyl looks like five to seven grains of salt, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. It’s not clear how opioids trigger this, but filled with fluid, the lungs can’t oxygenate blood very well, and a person may slip further into respiratory trouble. “Opioids kill people by slowing the rate of breathing and the depth of breathing,” says medical toxicologist and emergency physician Andrew Stolbach of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. If you think someone you love may be using or misusing opioids, talk to your loved one about the dangers of opioids and try to connect them to medical resources.
With opioid overdoses, surviving or dying wholly depends on breathing and oxygen. Fortunately, this process is rarely instantaneous; people slowly stop breathing which usually happens minutes to hours after the drug was used. While people have been “found dead with a needle in their arm,” more often there is time to intervene between when an overdose starts and before a victim dies. The healthcare provider may be able to use an antidote for certain drug overdoses.
This happens because the opioids negatively affect the part of your brain that’s responsible for breathing. Stimulants refer to a broad category of substances, with the most well-known being methamphetamines, cocaine, crack cocaine, and amphetamine-based ADHD medications (Adderall). Stimulants generally have a quick onset once they are consumed, and the effects usually wear off quickly as well. This pattern often results in continued use that grows over time, which can lead to overdose events. Combining different drugs can cause a particularly dangerous overdose. This can lead to breathing difficulties, lowered heart rate, seizures, and loss of consciousness.
Sometimes opioid overdose can include pulmonary edema (fluid leak into the airspaces of the lung). This is a noncardiogenic pulmonary edema, meaning it is not caused by fluid backup from a failing heart; doctors are still unsure of the exact mechanism behind this event. Despite the alarming increase in US opioid overdoses, most of us would be hard pressed to describe exactly what happens in the body during one.
A drug overdose is taking too much of a substance, whether it’s prescription, over-the-counter, legal, or illegal. If you’ve taken more than the recommended amount of a drug or enough to have a harmful effect on your body’s functions, you have overdosed. If you think you or someone you may know is experiencing an overdose, the best thing you can do is treat it like an emergency. Afterward, you may experience many complicated emotions about the overdose, how you reacted, and what to do to prevent future overdoses.
Providing supportive care, administering medication such as naloxone, and calling 911 can all help treat certain types of drug overdose. Even after administering this medication, it is crucial to take anyone experiencing an opioid overdose to the emergency room. A drug overdose means that an individual has consumed a toxic amount of a substance. According to the National Harm Reduction Coalition, ingesting too much of one or multiple drugs can harm the body. In this context, the question of how long an overdose takes is one that many people ask. Or, you may be a concerned loved one wanting to be prepared for the possibility.
The prescribed medications for these conditions may also interact with abused substances to cause an overdose. In 2021, 81.9% of all drug overdose deaths stemmed from opioids with synthetic fentanyl, a critical player. An opioid overdose can happen if a person has overloaded their body with medications or illicit drugs, or a combination of opioids and other medications, drugs, or alcohol. Every day, approximately 130 people die from an opioid overdose in the United States. Within 3-5 minutes without oxygen, brain damage starts to occur, soon followed by death.
Once you begin treatment with fluoxetine, you’ll likely continue taking it for several months. Mental health providers typically prefer patients to continue taking the drug for six to twelve months after depressive symptoms have stopped. According to data released by Florida’s Medical Examiners Commission, in the first six months of 2023, overdose deaths decreased by 7% when compared to the same months the previous year. Opioid-related deaths dropped 11%, and deaths caused by fentanyl dropped 10%.
In a hospital setting, healthcare providers order drug tests to diagnose opioid overdose. They also perform other tests to assess the health of the person and to look for possible complications. It can be difficult for people who use opioids or other substances to know what to expect when using nonmedical forms of opioids. https://sober-home.org/is-it-bad-to-mix-weed-and-alcohol/ This is because when they’re not regulated medically, they often have varying levels of potency. They may also be combined with other substances like heroin, high-grade fentanyl, carfentanil (an extremely strong opioid used by veterinarians to treat large animals like elephants) or other unknown substances.
Usually injected or inhaled, naloxone starts working in minutes and, in many cases, can reverse the overdose. Sensing small increases in CO2, the carotid body, a small cluster of cells in the neck, spurs big increases in breathing to remove excess CO2 and keep a person out of trouble. So, opioids might depress breathing by working directly on areas of the brain outside the brain stem. Police officers, emergency medical technicians and first responders carry and have training on how to give naloxone. In most communities, any person can get and carry naloxone on them, not just medical professionals.