Opiate Detox West Palm Encourages Narcan to Prevent Overdose
This article, opiate detox west Palm encourages Narcan Education to save lives. Hopefully will bring light to the negative stigma that is being reinforced by the media. Headlines below are in newspapers, magazines, and reported on the daily news now on a horrifyingly regular basis. Many of these articles have perpetuated that Narcan entices addicts to continue to use. This article provides much needed information on this life saving drug.
Typically, in the context of somebody who was found unresponsive and unable to be resuscitated from opiate overdose. The sad and scary reality is that novel opioids, not FDA approved drugs and often not even labeled for human consumption, are constantly being synthesized and sold by drug dealers across the globe.
Basically, clandestine scientists work in the laboratory to move some atoms around, making synthetic opioids such as acryl fentanyl or tetrahydrofuran fentanyl from known parent drugs like fentanyl (which is the most potent FDA-approved opiate used in human medicine at about 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin). The drug dealer’s goal is to make a cheaper, stronger, easier to transport product to get addicts “higher” and make more money. The unfortunate side-effect is that these new synthetic opiates are so strong, in fact, that people are dying from the minutest amount laced into what they think is heroin.
Headlines on Narcan and Naloxone
Some think Narcan is giving a license to addicts to continue using knowing they can be brought back to live. Fact check, this is not true. This is one of the reasons why opiate detox West Palm encourages learning how to administer this drug across populations. The headlines have been all over.
“New Naloxone-Resistant Drug Acrylfentanyl Is a Public Health Emergency” (Cision PR Newswire); “Narcan-resistant Drug Appears in Indiana” (EMSWORLD); “Narcan resistant synthetic opioids found in Kentucky” (New Objectives/Blog); “Fentanyl Found in Georgia Resists Life-Saving Naloxone Antidote” (Newsweek)
Logic would dictate that people would never intentionally put something that could very easily kill them into their bodies. But, logic and addiction are often mutually exclusive, and so goes the unrelenting strength, power, and counter intuitive destructiveness of the disease. As a matter of fact, addiction treatment patients say that when they hear somebody has overdosed they will intentionally seek out that person’s supplier because it is “good stuff”. Very scary situation and one which has cost countless lives as this opioid epidemic rages on. This is not because they say “Narcan will bring me back, so it’s OK to continue using.”
Narcan Education Can Save Lives
The second reason opiate detox West Palm encourages is it saves lives. There is another problem seen by opiate detox West Palm. These these new synthetic opioids- the so-called “Narcan-resistant” concept of these powerful drugs. The most common cause of mortality in opiate overdose is fulminant respiratory depression (i.e. the patient simply stops breathing). If the patient stops breathing there is no oxygen inhaled to reach vital organs such as the heart and brain. Prolonged respiratory arrest leads to death or permanent organ damage.
Brain damage from cerebral anoxia can occur in as little as six minutes. Narcan is the one pharmacologic “antidote” we have to combat acute opioid overdose and death, but it can be far less effective when new synthetic opioids are in the patients’ body, making overdose, organ damage, and death all the more probable even when Narcan is given promptly.
To be completely accurate, the term “Narcan-resistant” is a bit of a hyperbolic misnomer. Narcan will still work in patients overdosing on these new synthetic opiates- that pharmacology doesn’t change, but much, much more is needed to reverse respiratory depression and stave off death. This is because synthetic opiates bind so strongly to the body’s opiate receptors where Narcan is trying to attach to reverse the opiates’ effect.
This relative resistance is one reason that Evzio, a Narcan auto-injector (think Narcan epi-pen), recently increased their dose from 0.4mg to 2mg. The 2mg dose is certainly more effective. however, there are even still cases where it is not potent enough! What this comes down to is that we need some other method to be able to keep patients alive, keep oxygen-rich blood circulating to vital organs, until EMS can arrive, stabilize, and transport the patient to the emergency department.
Opiate detox West Palm Beach is only one city in the US that is trying to educate on Narcan. Drug rehabs Across the US should be providing widespread proficiency and training in overdose prevention. Particularly treatment centers, sober homes and patients’ family members, who are in contact with those suffering with addiction.
Overdose prevention means the proper administration of Narcan. It’s, the ability to activate emergency response and initiate CPR, and the utilization of Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). These are all necessary skills if we are to do everything we can to save a patient who has overdosed on opiates. Please consider learning these life-saving skills of “overdose prevention”
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