What to Expect if You Overdose
We’ve talked a lot about how to recognize an overdose when you see it, what not to do it if it happens to a friend of yours and certain risks you can avoid to keep yourself out of the emergency room, but in most cases, if you overdose, you aren’t going to know what hit you, much less what to do about it. So if the worst happens and you end up flat on your back on a gurney, here’s what the medical professionals will most likely do.
First, they will make stabilize your breathing and your heart rate. Next, get ready for a nasty shock: at least .4cc of naloxone into a muscle. The shot you won’t feel, but if it works like it’s supposed to, you’ll wake right up…and feel sicker than you’ve ever felt. The naloxone essentially knocks whatever opiates are in your system off your opiate receptors and stop them from repressing your breathing. If it doesn’t work within a few minutes, they may administer another dose.
At the emergency room, you’ll most likely have your stomach pumped. Even if the naloxone does its job, the drugs are still in your system. When the naloxone wears off, you could easily slip back into overdose as the opiates overwhelm your system again. To keep that from happening, you’ll undergo a gastric lavage (stomach pumping) and most likely receive a dose of activated charcoal and laxative to flush the rest of the drugs out of your body. After that, you’ll be hooked up to monitors to make sure that your heart rate and blood pressure are stabilized, given fluids intravenously and kept overnight for observation.
In the best scenario, the treatment will be effective and you’ll be able to go home within 24 hours. In the worst scenario, well, treatment won’t be effective or won’t arrive in time. Opiate overdose deaths are exceedingly common. You can guard against it by entering into a Suboxone detox and treatment and breaking your addiction to opioid-based prescription drugs.
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