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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Opiate overdose symptoms

B

Broken74

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 1, 2016
Messages
183
How can you tell the difference between someone over dosing on opiate/opiod or just being high?

I'm afraid to sleep at night thinking I may wake up next to someone not breathing. Certain nights I just can't tell the difference.
 
As a person that's been on opioid for years, I've been scared one time... I was on a plane with my gf now ex due to opiods, but I had taken a lot of morphine and I was nodding like nobodies business and my breathing started going super shallow and I would forget to breath. I had to tell myself HEY! KEEP BREATHING! So I'd focus on breathing and nothing else. I hope that helps some.
 
A massive overdose should be fairly easy to spot to the trained eye, but to answer your question, it's a very fine line between just being very intoxicated and dying. Cold/dry skin, infrequent breathing, change in skin color toward a purple/blue, unresponsive even to direct stimulation.
 
I don't know how much control you have over his/her drug use but definitely avoid combining anything else with opiates/opioids and going to sleep. Even with opiates/opioids alone, it might be risky if the doses are high. With non-pharmaceutical products, even higher because of the varying purity.


From the "Certain nights I just can't tell the difference" part of your post, I'd guess the doses are recreational and fairly high. It shouldn't be too difficult for you to check that he/she is breathing and has normal skin color. The real problem here is how are you going to do that while sleeping yourself?


It's hard to give advice without knowing the situation (and I'm not really qualified to give advice regardless) but would it be at all possible to take the opioid drugs earlier? That way you could periodically keep an eye on his/her breathing and it's also safer to wait a while after taking depressant drugs to go to sleep (as falling asleep usually boosts the respiratory depression from the drugs). This is of course asking a lot from you, take care of yourself as well. You shouldn't have to be someone's drug-sitter but perhaps buy more time with something like this and look for real solutions at the same time.
 
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Not much info to go off of... what's the drug, how much & what's happening ? Basically when someone stops breathing for several seconds then inhales (usually loudly) that's a good sign to make a pot of coffee or find something to stay alert to watch over... I have loads of experience in this area but more info would help.
 
Thank you for all of the responsesituation. I'll try to answer some of the points to the best of my ability.
1st... I don't know what type bcuz he is in denial stages with me and only admits any use at all when I realy won't drop the issue. He's been known to main line heroin but swears he hasn't done that at all. Not certain I can agree. Roxys led him here, which was his original preference, but even then I wasn't aware of that. So I've known of him using, oxy, roxy, heroin, perc, suboxone.

2nd... you are correct mapreduce , it means me not sleeping. This is frustrating and catching up quickly. I've been grabbing dunkin donuts at 10 or 12pm just to prepare myself for the night of babysitting. Last night was awful. I was told how it was a problem that I didn't wake him up when I notice these things instead of using it for my personal entertainment. Well dammit, I tried!!! He doesn't wake up. So I sit and count seconds between breaths. Or put a compact under the nose to see the breath or watch his shirt for movement as to signs of breathing. How is this entertaining? That was my response. And why is it my JOB that I am criticized for not pulling him out of his stupor, when I've been assured multiple times earlier that night that he took nothing?

3rd.. his skin does get cold, there are times when I think the tone color is not right but he's really tan with a darker Italian skin tone to begin with, so I question myself. It's like a rock and a hard spot between calling 911 or he's just really high. He's telling me I'm melo dramatic. Yet he won't watch the videos I've taken of him, i know if he did, he would see I'm not being melodramatic.

4th... yes it's recreational and I have no clue on dosage since we are in complete denial phase. Last week he cut his arm with a chainsaw so I know he needs pain relief, but this was a problem long before the accident (which I'm thinking is either directly or indirectly related)

5th... I can't keep staying up all night, my body just can't do it. I don't use so I have no other stimulants to keep me awake. But I get up faithfully at 5:30am for work 5 days a week and have been going on 1 or 2 hrs sleep. So at work I probably look like in the one strung out, and definitely am not as productive as I should be.

6th.. he stops breathing then breaths regularly. When I get to a count of 20 or 30 seconds with no breath I start making noise, moving him around, touching or talking to him... then when he comes to I am usually crying, we go for a walk or smoke 5 billion cigarettes while he drops most of them. I'm scared of waking up next to a corpse. My brother in law died in February from an accidental fentanyl overdose. His wife woke up next to him not breathing. So it's very dear to my heart as I know the possibility is very real.
 
In our discussion of overdose, my bf stated that im melodramatic bcuz OD happens do suddenly that you would know it was taking place.

My take is that is a slow process between being high and little by little the breathing slows until they fade/slip away. The opiates latching onto the same receptors that tell us to breath, but in high doses that opiate latches so strongly you forget to breath. Since it would be in midst of a very high state, you won't even realize it because you are in an alternate reality, possibly even on another Astral plane.
 
Whoimnot said:
Not much info to go off of... what's the drug, how much & what's happening ? Basically when someone stops breathing for several seconds then inhales (usually loudly) that's a good sign to make a pot of coffee or find something to stay alert to watch over... I have loads of experience in this area but more info would help.
Click to expand...

I hope any of those points listed helps.
 
Broken74 said:
In our discussion of overdose, my bf stated that im melodramatic bcuz OD happens do suddenly that you would know it was taking place.

My take is that is a slow process between being high and little by little the breathing slows until they fade/slip away. The opiates latching onto the same receptors that tell us to breath, but in high doses that opiate latches so strongly you forget to breath. Since it would be in midst of a very high state, you won't even realize it because you are in an alternate reality, possibly even on another Astral plane.
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That's definitely not true. Overdose does not necessarily happen instantaneously, even if someone is using intravenously, it can take time. He could for instance, be using Methadone on the side. Anything is possible. It shouldn't be your responsibility though.
 
There is so much I want to say but I don't know to say it properly.

Keif Richards is right. This is not your responsibility. I understand you care a great deal about this man and you don't want him to die.

I've seen my wife struggle with this during periods of my heavy addiction/use. I can remember lying to her about using when it was blatantly obvious i was high.

I don't know what to say... But there is so much I want to say. I can say this: I love my wife and I hated lying to her about my drug use. I only lied because I was ashamed and because I wanted to avoid fighting with her. I prayed that she would just silently understand me somehow... She did to an extent but I put her through hell.
 
Keif' Richards said:
That's definitely not true. Overdose does not necessarily happen instantaneously, even if someone is using intravenously, it can take time. He could for instance, be using Methadone on the side. Anything is possible. It shouldn't be your responsibility though.
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I agree! This is what I've been telling him. Once I lost my brother in law, I researched quite a bit about the fentanyl patch and about overdosing, looking for answers and closure and what could have been handled differently. They basically just slip away....
 
Keif' Richards said:
That's definitely not true. Overdose does not necessarily happen instantaneously, even if someone is using intravenously, it can take time. He could for instance, be using Methadone on the side. Anything is possible. It shouldn't be your responsibility though.
Click to expand...
MDPV_Psychosis said:
There is so much I want to say but I don't know to say it properly.

Keif Richards is right. This is not your responsibility. I understand you care a great deal about this man and you don't want him to die.

I've seen my wife struggle with this during periods of my heavy addiction/use. I can remember lying to her about using when it was blatantly obvious i was high.

I don't know what to say... But there is so much I want to say. I can say this: I love my wife and I hated lying to her about my drug use. I only lied because I was ashamed and because I wanted to avoid fighting with her. I prayed that she would just silently understand me somehow... She did to an extent but I put her through hell.
Click to expand...

Feel free to be blunt with what you want to say, I promise I don't get offended easily.
 
Broken74 said:
Feel free to be blunt with what you want to say, I promise I don't get offended easily.
Click to expand...

It's not that... I have been on the other side of your problem. I was using, scaring the shit out of my wife and lying about it right to her face. It was obvious i had a problem... She was scrambling to do whatever she could to help me.

But the reality was there wasn't much she could do or say. I had to come to terms with my problem. I had to decide I wanted to stop. I had to be the one to make myself stop.

The only thing my wife could do was be there for me... And at my worst, the best way she was able to be there for me, was by stepping back and letting things fall into place. She told me she knew I had a problem. She said she loved me and that she would be there for me. But she also made it clear that she wouldn't put up with it forever... She knew I wouldn't get better over night, she knew it would probably get worse before it got better.

Luckily I was able to get myself turned around and better... Before she got completely fed up and left.

Of course, I'm still an addict and I still struggle, but at this particular point things were BAD and she was just realising I was using. I had been for years, she just didn't know until it got bad.

I just don't know what to say to you. You must realize this guy is an addict. Most of us addicts don't suddenly get clean and stay clean forever. He will likely struggle with addiction his whole life. I know I will. Even when I'm clean, I'm still struggling.

I think you both need to get past the point of his denial. That is not easy. The hardest part for me was that at first my wife talked down to me and tried to control me. This just made me resent her and lie to her more. I'm not sure how your relationship is, but he is probably ashamed to admit anything to you. He probably doesn't want you to worry. He may not fully realise just how bad his problem is getting yet.

Addiction is horrible. I'm sorry you have to go through this.
 
I must apologize.

You came here asking only about opiate overdose symptoms. I've been rambling on a tangent based off what you said in your second reply.

I realize i don't know enough about your situation to make any assumptions, and I may be off base some.

Just something about the things you said reminds me of the terror I saw in my wife's eyes when she was confronting me in the beginning. I still feel tons of guilt and shame, not only for lieing directly to her face but also for putting her through hell.

I may not be relating correctly, and if that is the case, I apologize. I also apologize for going off topic.
 
I don't mean to get emotional here, but I feel like you should probably here this as a sort of reality-check on the situation OP. I dated a girl that I totally loved for about 2.5 years. I really would have done anything for her. She had one rule; that I couldn't inject Heroin. She did not use drugs, at all, of any kind. That's all that I couldn't do. She cared so much that she was literally willing to tell me that any and all drug use was acceptable, but that injecting Heroin, she was uncomfortable with. Despite all of my "love" and "caring" that I thought I had for this person, I didn't hesitate for 2 seconds the first time I had dope in front of me.

I had connections for Oxycodone, Hydromorphone and all kinds of other drugs at that point. It was just out of sheer convenience that I betrayed her. It was easier for me to get Heroin than pills at that current moment. We had sex that night, after I had injected drugs with a needle that truthfully, I did not myself see opened. I guess I really couldn't have cared that much, right?

I'm just saying, be prepared for some bullshit if you intend on a real confrontation. It's most likely going to be a painful experience for both of you. If my girlfriend had made a bottom line and stuck to it, maybe we would have failed instantly and maybe I would've gotten clean and everything would have been gravy. Either way, we both would have been happier. Me, using drugs like I want and her not needing to deal with the consequences.
 
MDPV_Psychosis said:
I must apologize.

You came here asking only about opiate overdose symptoms. I've been rambling on a tangent based off what you said in your second reply.

I realize i don't know enough about your situation to make any assumptions, and I may be off base some.

Just something about the things you said reminds me of the terror I saw in my wife's eyes when she was confronting me in the beginning. I still feel tons of guilt and shame, not only for lieing directly to her face but also for putting her through hell.

I may not be relating correctly, and if that is the case, I apologize. I also apologize for going off topic.
Click to expand...

I welcome all of your input. I have another thread titled "seeing the truth, knowing the truth, believing the lies" and another one "where to turn?" So even though your response was not directly related to this specific topic, it does relate to my entire situation.

I have been through addiction with family members, friends and my ex husband that I eventually left. So I'm in a familiar territory, in a sense. I realize it's not my responsibility, but I've chosen to ride this out, for the time being. If and when we get through this, I believe our bond will be stronger... I guess I'm trying to educate myself in every aspect as possible until he is ready to come to terms with things on his, with whatever loving guidance I can offer.
 
^That's great. It will be an uphill battle I'm sure, but it's not unwinnable. If I could only give one piece of advice, it would be to remain firm in everything you say and do. Just like you would need to be with a child or with a new puppy. Decide what you want for yourself and your s/o, draw a line in the sand that you both can more or less agree to and stick to it. When addicts spot weakness, they tend to capitalize on it.
 
When I ODed I just dropped. NO symptoms that i could remember. Symptoms are very rare. Not noticeable enough to prevent it alone. A cold towel around a friends neck works. But I always use alone.
 
I don't know where you live, but they have safe house, with on site nurses. It's a place where you can be high and have the security of knowing that there are ppl trained to handle over doses. It's like a harm reduction site. You can't use intravenously on the property, but they are aware that's what and how you use and allow you a place so ppl aren't driving while nodding out or afraid to go home high.
 
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