what happens to your body when you overdose on fentanyl

What Happens During an Opioid Overdose?

Every bit America wrestles with the opioid crisis, people experience overdoses every day. According to the well-nigh contempo statistics from the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention (CDC), 192 people dice from drug overdoses each twenty-four hour period, and nearly 68 percent of these deaths involve opioids.

If you or someone you lot know takes prescription opioids or is struggling with opioid abuse, it's essential to sympathise how overdoses work and how to reply to them.

Signs of an Opioid Overdose

When someone overdoses on opioids, it can sometimes be difficult to tell the deviation between regular intoxication and an overdose country. Every person has a slightly unlike reaction to an overdose, but typical symptoms include:

• Loss of consciousness
• Being unresponsive to exterior stimuli
• Existence awake simply unable to speak
• Breathing very shallowly or erratically
• Making choking or gurgling noises that may sound like a snore
• Airsickness

Someone in an opioid overdose volition exist very limp if you attempt to pick up their manus or move them. Their face may be pale and clammy, and their fingernails may change color to a night blue or royal due to lack of oxygen. Their pulse will be slow, erratic or may not be in that location at all. If you are not sure, treat each state of affairs as a potential overdose, and call for emergency medical attention.

What Happens to Your Body When You Overdose on Opioids?

Whether someone takes a painkiller in the grade of a pill or injects an illicit opioid, the substance spreads throughout the body to the centre, lungs and brain. On its journey through the arrangement, the opioid engages receptors that are responsible for the diverse effects seen during an overdose.

In the encephalon, opioid drugs interact with opioid receptors that are involved with the production of dopamine, causing the brain to release more of the chemical. The rise in dopamine volition crusade the person to fall asleep, with their caput drooping and jerking equally they motility between states of slumber and consciousness. This symptom is referred to as "nodding off."

Nigh importantly, opioids interfere with the part of the brain that regulates unconscious animate. During an overdose, the factor that determines life or death is unremarkably oxygen availability. With depressed breathing, the lungs aren't able to transfer plenty oxygen to the blood, and the heart tin beginning chirapsia erratically — this can pb to the person experiencing cardiac arrest.

Lack of oxygen also causes the brain to stop communicating properly with the residual of the body, leading organs to close downward. Oxygen deprivation of just a few minutes can likewise lead to seizures and permanent brain damage in the class of a toxic encephalon injury (TBI).

Preventing and Responding to Opioid Overdose

For those who have prescription opioids, circumspection and attention to medico and chemist instructions are the best manner to preclude an adventitious overdose. These guidelines tin assist preclude an overdose on legal opioids:

• Do non mix alcohol with your medication, as it greatly increases the risk of overdose.
• Practice not take new medication lonely or in unfamiliar settings.
• Do not have more than the prescribed dosage.
• When switching to a new dosage or new type of medication, start at the lowest dose before requesting a higher one.

People taking illicit opioids like heroin are much more than likely to overdose, due to the college drug say-so and intention of achieving a high from the drug. Illicit opioids are besides typically injected, which results in higher concentrations of the drug entering the bloodstream at a quicker pace. A pregnant threat besides occurs when illicit medications are cut with other drugs, often a stronger simply less expensive opioid by the name of fentanyl which is responsible for thousands of overdoses in the past few years.

If yous suspect someone in your presence has overdosed on opioids, do the post-obit:

• Call 911 right away and let them know you need an ambulance for an overdose.
• Try to rouse the person by shaking them and shouting their name.
• Put the person in the recovery position to forbid them from choking.
• Stay with the person until help arrives, and stay around for a while afterward, if possible.
• Administer naloxone if it is available to you.

The recovery position is an important part of outset help, and information technology can go on the person from experiencing further breathing issues. It involves rolling the person onto their side with one arm outstretched and the other cushioning the caput. If possible, identify the person in the recovery position earlier administering naloxone.

Naloxone, normally known as Narcan, is a medication that can quickly reverse an opioid overdose in emergency situations. It works by pushing other drugs off of opioid receptors in the brain, which reverses and blocks their effects. Its main action is restoring normal respiration to people who accept slowed animate or stopped breathing birthday as a result of their overdose.

What's Next Afterward an Opioid Overdose?

If y'all or someone you know suffers an opioid overdose, it ways that addiction handling is the next necessary stride. Of the types of opioid addiction treatment available, medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is the almost constructive. It is a combination of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) canonical medication administered in conjunction with psychosocial counseling, and information technology is more effective than behavioral or medication interventions on their own.

Options include methadone and buprenorphine, also as buprenorphine compounds such every bit Suboxone^®. These medications prevent or reduce the worst symptoms of withdrawal, allowing people to stop abusing opioids safely.

At Applegate Recovery, we have found that buprenorphine compounds are the most effective MAT medication. The benefits of Suboxone^® treatment are far-reaching, and it is an advisable method of treatment for people with a wide variety of needs. Mayhap the greatest benefit is privacy and flexibility. Whereas methadone treatment requires participants to attend a dispensary on a daily basis, our office-based opioid handling (OBOT) programme allows y'all to get a prescription filled at a chemist's shop similar you would any other medication.

Suboxone^® also has the lowest risk of abuse of all the FDA-approved MAT drugs due to its inclusion of naloxone. If yous attempt to misuse Suboxone^® by crushing information technology or dissolving it for injection, the naloxone volition be activated and immediately produce unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, making it nigh impossible to abuse.

OBOT is also much more affordable than options like residential or partial hospitalization treatment, while providing participants with the same skills and resources needed to succeed in recovery.

Trust Applegate Recovery

At Applegate Recovery, we specialize in OBOT for adults. Across our multiple locations,  our team of physicians and other care professionals provides each patient with a comprehensive MAT programme tailored to individual needs, and they work hard to ensure every private receives the back up they need to overcome opioid addiction.

If you lot or someone you care about has experienced an overdose or is otherwise struggling with an addiction to opioids, there is no time to waste product in getting the assist necessary to heal. Call Applegate Recovery at 888.488.5337 or fill out our contact form to go started.

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