Should most drugs be dosed by bodyweight?

[Horrux]

Most medications are, as in mg/kg of bodyweight, instead of "a normal dose is 100mg" type thing...

I gather that theoretically this should also apply to recreational drugs, correct?

Reason I ask is that I weigh more than twice my GF, so... I should take at least twice what she takes right?

Sometimes trying new stuff can be daunting when I don't know how to dose it because dosages are often expressed in terms of "a normal dose is X amount"... A 90lb girl and a 250lb man would have wildly different effects with the same dose of anything, right?

Please discuss.

 

[Pjkt2501]

Most "drugs" don't work like this. 50ug of LSD isn't going to have half the effect in someone 2x the weight.

 

[Darksidesam]

i dont think mdma works like this either.
its about how much serotonin you have to release with that stuff i think

 

[Alex000]

Body weight is a contributing factor to some drugs, but often only a small contributing factor. Alcohol is definitely a drug to dose dependent on weight, but most other drugs don't really work this way, though it can be a small factor.

 

[NeighborhoodThreat]

It's a contributing factor yes, but its such a small difference that most people never notice a difference.

Unless one person weighs 100 lb and the next person weighs 1000 lb...there isn't any real difference.

So no, just because you weigh twice as much as your girlfriend doesn't mean you should take twice as much of the drug in question.

 

[Termino]

I would think that most drugs (in the sense used here on BL) would have very similar effects regardless of body mass because brain mass is approximately the same in all adults.

 

[Pilll_head]

The variability of the effect from person to person (even two people who weigh the same) is big enough so that a recommended dose is a good ballpark estimate for you unless your weight is really high or really low, then I would change the dose. I work in the drug industry and when we dose drugs on people we get to see the graphs that show the blood concentrations of the drug over time. its not uncommon for one person to have twice as much drug in their bloodstream as the next person even though they took the exact same dose and weigh about the same.

 

[Horrux]

The variability of the effect from person to person (even two people who weigh the same) is big enough so that a recommended dose is a good ballpark estimate for you unless your weight is really high or really low, then I would change the dose. I work in the drug industry and when we dose drugs on people we get to see the graphs that show the blood concentrations of the drug over time. its not uncommon for one person to have twice as much drug in their bloodstream as the next person even though they took the exact same dose and weigh about the same.

Thank you, now that is an enlightening response.

 

[Pjkt2501]

Pharmaceuticals != street drugs