Another Look At Why Alcohol May Be More Dangerous Than Heroin

[S.J.B.]

Besides, most opioid ODs aren't just opioid ODs, they're alcohol and opioid ODs or some other mix of drugs.

That is the truth, and I will keep repeating it over and over until people get it, because it is enormously important:

Drug overdose deaths occur almost exclusively after the consumption of multiple drugs, primarily multiple depressants ... In Scotland in 2012, it was found that 97.6% of all people who died of a drug overdose had multiple drugs in their system at the time of death. By far the most common class of drugs found were benzodiazepines (72.1% ). In the state of New South Wales in Australia, a study was done on all overdose deaths involving oxycodone over a decade. In every single case, multiple drugs were found in the systems of the deceased, and once again, benzodiazepines were the most common (68.6% ). Alcohol is another drug that is often present in drug overdose deaths. Drinking even a small amount of alcohol significantly increases one’s likelihood of dying while taking an opioid.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Nice references SJB! Especially the second to last link. Golden.

 

[Dysphoric]

Disregarded it as soon as I saw methamphetamine somehow causing more deaths than cocaine.

 

[neversickanymore]

^ the whole premiss? Thats black and white addict thinking.

 

[shoo-bop]

I made more or less the same point in the other current thread discussing this research, but I have to call "semi-bullshit" on it. The methods section of the abstract of the original Lancet paper in 2010 says that the way they came up with these rankings was:

"Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance."

So a hand-picked (and therefore quite possibly biased) group of "experts" (but not necessarily experts on all the drugs they were ranking, nor all the criteria on which they were ranking them) made some subjective ratings, and then these were "weighted" on a subjective assessment of their "relative importance". Given that their final data is in the form of "numbers", it looks a lot more "scientific" than it probably is. It would be interesting to try to look at things like:

- The rate of death from the drug
- The cost of drug-related diseases
- The costs of specific types of harms to others
- The costs of crime related to that drug

But you'd need to look at it both on an overall level (i.e. the absolute amount of harm across all of society), and also the degree of harm per-user of the specific drug: Some drugs might be used very uncommonly, and might therefore have a very low overall impact, but still be much more dangerous to those few users who do use them, relative to other more commonly-used drugs (is that perhaps how ketamine, benzos, methadone, and butane all are rated as less harmful than cannabis in this "study"?) You'd also need to break it down by regulatory framework, wealth of the country, etc., because things like legality, access to health care, etc., would all modify the "harmfulness" of the drug. This study only attempted to rate these drugs' impact in the UK.

 

[Acanthus]

I like to put it this way: alcohol is so toxic that it causes symptoms of poisoning the following day (this is all a hangover is). On the other hand I can take a huge amount of opiates, and have absolutely zero side-effects other than maybe a pleasant somnolence.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Yup, that's how I look at it. Same goes for longer term effects of chronic use. Only trouble arises for opioids when it comes to: dealing with the war on drugs, illegality/drug law enforcement, and the violence and corruption of the black market; compulsive/impulsive use; not using proper techniques when it comes to administration (this goes for smoking, insulfating and rectal use, but especially IV/IM/subcutaneous injection). Of course those are all interrelated issues, perhaps other than the addictive quality of opioids, although even that is hugely influenced and shaped by prohibition.