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Heroin Can a serious heroin overdose do massive brain damage?

R

reefer4l

Greenlighter
Joined
Jul 13, 2011
Messages
2
i apologize for the wall of text but i think this information might be required to help answer my question. anyway, if any of you can help it would be much appreciated! i decided to post here because this is definitely the most intelligent drug forum i've stumbled upon + there's none of that SWIM bullshit. 8) anyways...

drugs are growing at a crazy rate where i live, especially with the high school kids. when i say drugs i don't mean weed and ecstasy, i mean meth and heroin.

one of my best friends (age 16) almost died of a heroin overdose two days ago. the doctor said he's lucky to be alive. he came home (or was dropped off "anonymously") completely fucked up with large bumps/bruises all over his head (possibly from falling down, or worst case scenario from being jumped?) and his parents took him to the ER. he was put into a doctor induced coma because his organs (liver, heart, and lungs) were doing so badly. not only this, but the heroin was tearing away at his muscles. they soon drug tested him and found heroin in his system; so my guess is it was his first time shooting up and he didn't know what he was doing. fortunately yesterday he woke up and was able to breath on his own and talk a little bit.

today i received a text from his sister:
he is doing better but they keep doing this test and the number continues to go down right now it's 17,000 but it has to be at 190 so its still very high but once it is down all the way im pretty sure his heart and kidneys will be okay
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my question is because his lungs were doing so badly, do you think severe brain damage occurred? severe enough to make him almost a different person?

unfortunately i don't know the specifics, i.e. if or how long he went without oxygen. but any of your knowledgeable answers would mean a lot to me, as this kid is pretty much my best friend and i'm worried to see what he'll be like when he's released from the hospital. however right now i'm just extremely grateful he's alive.
 
NeighborhoodThreat said:
I suppose the oxygen deprivation that would come as a result of respiratory depression could cause brain damage.
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Yeah, that's exactly what I'm worried about. I'm just curious how much brain damage that could cause. I really don't want to see a kid who I've been so close to be forced to suffer through gnarly brain damage for the rest of his life.
 
It's impossible to tell you exactly how much brain damage your friend may or may not have suffered. There's no way to tell from what you've told us on an Internet forum, just too many variables. Your friend should see a specialist doctor and they'll be able to give them a better idea of what happened and what didn't happen.
 
Yeah, this is how opiates can damage the brain. It actually doesn't have to even be this serious of an overdose for damage to happen. The brain is really resilient though and will be able to cope with a certain amount of damage. There's no telling how bad it is until he gets back to his life (I guess unless it's really bad).
 
Opiates themselves aren't generally very neurotoxic (although they can, and will if use is prolonged result in certain maladaptive changes to the brain, its not the same as blowing holes in nerve axons, or frying cells outright), but as said, prolonged oxygen deprivation is reknowned for causing brain damage. How much, nobody here can say, we don't have his case notes, and even then its not possible to predict with certainty how things will go.

He could walk out completely fine, he could be left a vegetable. The latter is a worst case scenario though, and hopefully he will be fine. I wish him the best of luck, and hope things go well.

As for 'the heroin is tearing away at his muscles', rhabdomyolysis (breakdown of muscle tissue) is not a typical symptom of uncomplicated opioid OD, aside from being really bloody painful, the danger here, is that the breakdown fragments of damaged muscle, once they start circulating in the bloodstream, start to damage the kidneys. Did he get the shite beaten out of him or something? it sounds like he did from what you posted.

The brain is very good at recovering from damage, to a degree, the younger he is, likely the better and the greater capacity for recovery he should have. At his age, then I think the outlook should at least, be hopeful. What cannot be repaired, can also, often be compensated for. There have been cases of infants, or younger kids who have had to undergo radical surgery, to the extent of a hemispherectomy (where an entire half of the brain is removed), areas critical to such things as speech and writing, such as Wernicke's and Broca's areas are localised to one side, and in many of those cases, even though those areas of the brain have gone completely, the kids have compensated, and been able to function completely normally.

Although its true that at such an early age, things are a little different, and very early years tend to bestow far far greater a capacity for adaptation of that nature, still, he is young, and should be strong. Hopefully, he will manage to adapt.
 
depends on how long you weren't breathing, i.e. the time there was no oxygen in your bloodstream. the longer the time you are suffocated the more brain damage will result from the constriction of oxygen to brain thus killing numerous brain cells.
 
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