Legal drugs cause most Melbourne overdoses - AAP, 08.05.2012

[spacejunk]

Well it is more then double that of last year so I'd call that a pretty big increase...

double?
445 in 2009-10 and 590 in 2010-11 isn't even a 50% increase.

 

[wazza]

double?
445 in 2009-10 and 590 in 2010-11 isn't even a 50% increase.

first post has " Also, the city's use of crystal methamphetamine (ice) is sky-rocketing, with metropolitan paramedics responding to 282 calls for people on the drug in 2010-2011, compared to 136 the previous year"

 

[spacejunk]

ah, my apologies. was looking at the table you posted, wazza.

i assume that emergency call figures include psychotic reactions? i've not heard of meth overdoses resulting in anything but mental disturbance, but i'm sure cardiac arrest (or stroke?) is a distinct possibility.

it's weird, i have very little contact with meth these days, whereas 8 or 9 years ago everybody i knew was using it. maybe reflects more on my friends than anything else...
all i seem to hear nowadays is how expensive it is, and how shit the quality is, but i guess it's all about who you know.

 

[drug_mentor]

if we assume that "drug incidents" refers to ambulance calls related to acute effects of overconsumption, it doesn't seem as obvious, not to me anyway. i don't really know anyone that has had to call an ambulance after drinking too much unless they hurt themselves whilst drunk.

In High School I easily knew 10-20 people that drank themselves into the back of an ambulance, admittedly it hasn't happened to many people I know since but probably still one or two. Also I think a lot of drunken disorderlys may potentially be referred to hospitals by sympathetic cops, I know a few years ago I had a really embarrassing incident on a fuckload of hard liquor and benzodiazepines that lead to me being arrested, I honestly don't remember all the details but they ended up opting to call an ambulance for me and holding me in hospital overnight instead of taking me to lock up, perhaps this happens more often than people realise?

 

[thestudent14]

I think a lot of people underestimate the ability cannabis has to induce anxiety in some people. Given how widely used it is, and how often panic attacks are mistaking for 'oh god I'm dying!' the number makes sense.

Like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoHIhzGRl7E&feature=related



Lets not forget how much more common it is for people to smoke weed before they've tried other drugs. Once people have been high or tripped a few more times they learn to know nothing is wrong.

 

[spacejunk]

^ cannabis-naive people ingesting strong edibles is often a recipe for perceived-emergencies as well.
having ingested too much weed a few times myself, i can see how people could believe they were seriously ill or even dying. especially if they are dosed unknowingly or accidentally - people in these cases often think they are having a heart attack or going crazy.
again it comes down to education - the more people know, the less likely they are to make mistakes like that, or to call an ambulance in the event that they have too much.

synthetics - as mentioned above - are a whole other story though.

 

[wazza]

An ex house mate tried calling poison line and 000 because she thought the half cone she had was way too strong and she was overdosed. My now wife and I had a hard time trying to convince the chick she wasn't dying due to us laughing at the absurdity of the situation also brought on by the strong strong weed. So I have seen the situation of someone freaking out over 'a small amount' relative terms for the panic it induced. Definitely can bring on 000 calls, whether or not it feels warranted post situations, being in the middle of it wouldn't be a good experience thinking you're dying.

I'm happy that in 26 years of drug use I've never felt like calling an Ambo, not from an oversized ego just handled intense situations easier than some others I guess. My wife can feel over indulged at times where I'd say work with it cause it's a privilege to be so fucked not a fear to be had heh.

 

[thickskin]

^ cannabis-naive people ingesting strong edibles is often a recipe for perceived-emergencies as well.
having ingested too much weed a few times myself, i can see how people could believe they were seriously ill or even dying. especially if they are dosed unknowingly or accidentally - people in these cases often think they are having a heart attack or going crazy.
again it comes down to education - the more people know, the less likely they are to make mistakes like that, or to call an ambulance in the event that they have too much.

Yeah high level consumption of edible cannabis can cause some pretty bad feelings. One time when I accidentally over did it (due to the edibles taking 5 hours to come on) i could barely stand and felt nauseous similar to being very drunk. I suppose some people may thing something seriously wrong is going on

 

[pisspotnrock]

man I love this article!!

theres no doubt in my mind that the benzoes rate so high due to people drinking alcohol whilst on them..

I was at a hiphop gig in the city last thursday and after it was finished everyone was mingling out the front, drunk as fuck/off their head on whatever... anyway, I was munted on MDMA so I was talkin to all these random junkie rat lookin cunts (lol) and they were litterally dribbling all over themselves, struggling to keep theyre eyes open..

they proceeded to tell me they were zonked out on xannex (I had also witnessed them drinkin at the bar prior) and how they lost all their bars (another lol) and they would sell me some when they find em... long story short, if I was a regular memeber of society and these people were my friends or I was unaware of what they had taken, I would probably call an ambulance haha they were that bad....

this article (and hopfully more to come) should drill a bit of sense and understanding into all the narrow-minded, non-users out there %)

 

[opi8]

This does not say "Over Dose" it says "Ambulance Calls for Drug Incidents". I think that's a very important distinction to make.

All of those benzo calls could be from withdrawal, not overdose. Alcohol could include all kinds of things that drunk people did whilst under the influence, which is probably why it's so high. I'm not defending alcohol, I think it's a cunt of a drug myself.

My point is, these stats don't necessarily mean that all of these calls were overdose related. It means an ambulance was called. A family member could have been worried. A passerby may have been. Shit, a kid accidentally may have called 000. That's all I'm saying.

 

[drug_mentor]

I know a lot of people can get anxious smoking bud but 3 callouts for it every single day in Victoria still seems excessive to me. I am pretty sure there isn't more than 5 or 6 million people in Victoria and it really seems huge to me to think that many callouts would happen per day. Atleast half the people I have associated with for the better part of ten years smoke cannabis with some degree of regularity and I do not know one single person who even contemplated calling an ambulance honestly. I have seen a number of freakouts but still no ambulances. Not saying its impossible but I find it hard to believe synthetics aren't included in that category personally.

 

[footscrazy]

Well it is more then double that of last year so I'd call that a pretty big increase...

If it was one last year and two this year it'd be double, something doubling is effectively useless information.

I think an increase of 146 callouts for the year is pretty small, given the amount of meth users in Melbourne and importantly, can't simply be deemed to be caused by increasing use, let alone 'sky rocketing' use.

 

[Tronica]

This does not say "Over Dose" it says "Ambulance Calls for Drug Incidents". I think that's a very important distinction to make.

My point is, these stats don't necessarily mean that all of these calls were overdose related. It means an ambulance was called. A family member could have been worried. A passerby may have been. Shit, a kid accidentally may have called 000. That's all I'm saying.

I used to work on this study at Turning Point. opi8 is correct - there is a big difference between overdose and ambulance calls, and withdrawal, worried family/friends, they are all included too.

The way that we used to (and I assume, the way they are continuing to) code is if a drug is mentioned in the ambulance record, it is coded as associated with that drug. So, if someone has a heroin overdose, but cannabis use is also mentioned, the case is coded with heroin and cannabis. We did not attempt to determine which drug was chiefly responsible for the call if there were multiple drugs mentioned.

This is one of the reasons why you get such a high number of cannabis mentions. We used to also report cannabis only ambulance call-outs - check the report to see if they mention that number as it is informative to how you interpret the data.

Another thing about these data - I was surprised when I first started working with the data how many people, everyday in Victoria, were attended by ambulance due to overdosing on pills - benzos, antidepressants, antipsychotics, opioid and non-opioid analgesics. I had no idea how many people took ODs of paracetamol for example. For some people it appeared to be accidental overdose but for most that I coded, it appeared intentional. It was pretty depressing coding these data... a lot of sad people out there.

Of course alcohol is the biggest contributor and is often the one that is overlooked.

 

[Mr Blonde]

^ Thanks for the clarification Tronica, that cannabis statistic makes a lot more sense now... and it's good to see the work you've been doing lately!

I had no idea how many people took ODs of paracetamol for example. For some people it appeared to be accidental overdose but for most that I coded, it appeared intentional. It was pretty depressing coding these data... a lot of sad people out there.

I first realized a few years ago, reading journal articles, that paracetamol is the drug responsible for the most drug-related hospital admissions. The numbers may fluctuate, but I don't doubt that it is still responsible for a great deal due to it's wide availability.

You may be interested to hear that the TGA has decided to change the maximum pack size you can get in supermarkets from 24 to 20, due to finding a correlation between the size of the most widely available pack of paracetamol and the dose taken in an intentional overdose. They also believe that the difference of a couple of grams could have a real impact on the number of injuries and deaths associated with intentional overdose of paracetamol.

 

[spacejunk]

thanks tronica - that clears up a lot of the ambiguities in the figures!
i was qiute baffled by them and the context, but not so much any more.
the alcohol figure makes particular sense...such a menace to society!

 

[opi8]

It's sad that (at least where I grew up) in primary school, it's common knowledge that if you eat a whole box of Panadol (r)(tm) it will (apparently) kill you. In some circumstances, teachers have told naughty (read: depressed/neglected) children to "go eat a box of Panadol if you really want to die".

I heard this (panadol being a way to commit suicide) like I'd hear a rude joke, it's something that kids pass around as knowledge. It is good to know the risks, but it's never said that to die from liver failure is one of the worst ways to die. Desperate teens will remember what they heard when they're in a state of desperation, sometimes deciding to take their own life. Swallowing a bunch of pills on the movies looks kind of glamorous.

Real education is what we need. Not fear, misinformation, blatant lies and propaganda. We also need to treat people who are addicted to certain substances as people who need help, not as some of the worst criminals our sentencing laws provide. There is no comparison between a violent or sexual offence and a drug offence, yet they are locked up together, with prejudice. Shit needs to change.

 

[Mr Blonde]

^ That's horrible... you can't say that sort of thing to children.

 

[gimpan]

Would of thought the alcohol numbers would be alot higher considering how widely its used in this country and the fact its legal.

 

[Tronica]

The alcohol rates make sense given what gimpan observes - we drink a lot in this country so we would expect high rates of harms. What would be more useful is rates based on the number of people who use the drug, rather than on the number of people that live in a particular area - then we would be comparing apples with apples. This is impossible to do with any accuracy though because it's hard to know how many people use particular illicit drugs (while we have surveys to use as estimates, they are not necessarily accurate).

 

[Jakeperson]

I'm happy that in 26 years of drug use I've never felt like calling an Ambo, not from an oversized ego just handled intense situations easier than some others I guess. My wife can feel over indulged at times where I'd say work with it cause it's a privilege to be so fucked not a fear to be had heh.

I've rang an ambulance from a hospital before. I didn't believe I was in hospital and I just had to escape from my kidnapper, who I latter realised was my nurse. :/