Drug overdose refers to the occurrence of intoxication of the body due to its poisoning with an increased dose of a narcotic drug. An overdose can overtake any drug addict, since people who use such substances rarely realize that the body at any particular time can react to this substance with intoxication and even death. In each case, when a person has a similar condition, he needs to be urgently hospitalized, because it is very dangerous.
In order to understand that there is a person with an overdose nearby, just look at him carefully. Most often, during this process, the body of the victim is immobilized, he can either sit or lie down without signs of life. The face of the drug addict in this case turns blue, since intoxication with any kind of narcotic substance usually affects the respiratory system.
In this case, you should try to return the victim to consciousness by shouting, shaking him, and if this is not possible, you need to call an ambulance, remember the time when resuscitation begins and begin to provide first aid to the drug addict.
First aid – what is the point?
So, immediately upon detection of a drug addict in a state after an overdose, he should try to regain consciousness. It is also very important to make sure that the person’s airways are free, if necessary, they should be cleaned of foreign objects and vomit, after laying the victim on a horizontal surface and turning his head to the side. In the presence of a pulsation, it is important to give the addict artificial respiration in a timely manner. In the absence of a pulse, a person needs to perform an indirect cardiac massage. All these manipulations should be performed either until the moment when consciousness returns to the victim and he begins to breathe normally freely, or until the arrival of the emergency team.
After bringing the addict to consciousness, he needs to be calmed down so as not to cause panic attacks and not aggravate the condition of the victim. At the same time, all active stimuli are excluded – loud music, bright lights are turned off, the person is asked to breathe in deeply and exhale calmly. It’s in the drug addict’s interest that the doctors come as soon as possible.
Causes of the pathological condition
An overdose occurs in the human body if it has received the amount of a drug with which it cannot cope and this fact carries a threat to life and health. This situation most often occurs in novice drug addicts who do not yet know “their” dose for normal well-being. Experienced drug addicts usually know their limits, although they often fall into overdose nets, since drug addiction has 3 stages. At the first stage, tolerance to the substance used increases in the body. This is due to the ability of the human body to adapt to the conditions that arise around it. Gradually, the addict must increase the dose of the drug consumed each time in order to achieve the desired euphoria.
At the same time, the second stage of dependence gradually comes, when tolerance, gradually increasing, reaches its maximum, after which, with an increase in the amount of substance consumed, intoxication occurs. This is the third stage, in which the addict uses lethal doses of drugs, and the body at the same time ceases to cope with incoming poisons, as tolerance decreases. At the same time, the person himself cannot know exactly when this stage will come, so most drug addicts get into a situation with overdoses and many of them die in the process.
In addition to the natural process of adaptation of the body described above, other factors can also influence the occurrence of an overdose – concomitant somatic diseases in a person, prolonged abstinence from the use of narcotic drugs, the way drugs are used, the general use of psychoactive substances, and so on.
Condition symptoms
The symptomatology of pathological intoxication directly depends on the substance that the victim has consumed. However, the type of drug does not affect the fact that in case of an overdose, the cardiovascular system, brain, kidneys and liver are the first to suffer in the body.
Many drugs depress the action of the central nervous system. This occurs with the use of opiates, which include heroin, morphine, poppy straw, codeine, and benzodiazepine tranquilizers such as sibazon.
At the same time, the symptoms of poisoning with such substances are expressed in discontinuity and failures of respiratory practice, a sharp decrease in pressure, failures in the process of heartbeat, constriction of the pupils of the eyes, cessation of their reaction to a light source, pallor of the skin, blue fingers and lips, lethargy of consciousness (and sometimes falling into coma), vomiting, convulsions, foaming at the mouth. To confirm your own guesses about a drug overdose, you can examine the body of the victim for the presence of injection marks on it.
If an overdose of opiates has occurred, then the person becomes inhibited, and his speech begins to go astray. His breathing will become less and less frequent, since these substances can depress the respiratory center in the body, which will ultimately cause death.
If an excess of psychostimulant drugs, for example, amphetamines, ephedrine, cocaine, screw, enters the body, then the nervous system, on the contrary, is activated. The drug addict experiences psycho-emotional arousal, he begins to rave and see hallucinations, toss and turn, his temperature rises, hypertension occurs, his heart rate increases, the person shivering, he sweats, the skin becomes blue, vomiting and convulsions begin. At the same time, heart attacks and strokes, cardiovascular insufficiency, and arrhythmias often develop.
Often, other drug addicts, seeing that their “friend” has fallen into a similar state, try not to help him, but, on the contrary, to hide him from prying eyes, wait until everything goes away on its own, which in most cases leads to the death of a person. It is necessary to try to avoid this by promptly calling a team of specialists and providing first aid to the victim in case of an overdose.