oxycodone experience for mystery book

[ruka]

I'm writing a mystery book and hoping some of you with oxycodone experience can help. My character gets addicted to oxycodone after an injury. He builds up a tolerance. The murderer gets him to take his regular dose in an unfamiliar place, causing him to OD. To make it realistic...

1. Does taking this in a new place increase the effects that much, or does he need alcohol or something else on top of it?
2. Any suggestions about dosages, like how much he had built up to?
3. Can he function as a student with a high oxycodone dependence, and would others notice obvious changes?

Thanks much!!

 

[wwwindexx]

what do you mean "new place"

 

[Tommyboy]

I'm writing a mystery book and hoping some of you with oxycodone experience can help. My character gets addicted to oxycodone after an injury. He builds up a tolerance. The murderer gets him to take his regular dose in an unfamiliar place, causing him to OD. To make it realistic...

1. Does taking this in a new place increase the effects that much, or does he need alcohol or something else on top of it?
2. Any suggestions about dosages, like how much he had built up to?
3. Can he function as a student with a high oxycodone dependence, and would others notice obvious changes?

Thanks much!!

1. See the article linked below.
2. It is not uncommon for oxycodone users to have a tolerance in the 2-3 hundreds.
3. It depends. Most would decrease their alcohol consumption (assuming they drank like a college student) as they increased their oxycodone use. Drugs like suboxone help people hide their drug usage, because people can take small doses of it to prevent them from being sick, and opiate withdrawal (sickness) is one of the ways that friends/family notice that the person has a problem. The other main "give-away" is that oxycodone users end up having financial issues since it is such an expensive habit.

what do you mean "new place"

What he means by that is that there is something called "learned tolerance." What is means is that if a person takes their dose in the same setting, they develop a tolerance to the setting as well. Using the same dose in another place can lead to overdose. Here is one of the many scientific articles on the topic.

 

[ruka]

Thanks for the response Tommyboy. That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for and will help a ton with the book if that's the direction that it goes.