Do Prescription Drug Abusers Know What To Do In The Case Of An Overdose?

Statistics show that throughout the United States and several other countries, prescription drug abuse is rampant. However, for many prescription drug abusers, they are quite unaware of how to react to the serious symptoms and health consequences of an overdose.

Now, recent findings published in the International Journal of Drug Policy examine different potential options that many abusers are unaware of that could, in turn, save their life, in the case of a life-threatening overdose. 

For the study, researchers carried out in-depth interviews with 46 prescription drug abusers between the ages of 18 and 32. All of the participants resided in New York City, during which time opioid abuse tripled from 2000 to 2011. The majority of the sample, at about 75 percent, was white, while 50 percent had some sort of college education and nine participants were college graduates.

"What we found is that when it comes to how to handle an overdose, prescription opioid users who weren't using drugs for official medical reasons were less savvy than, say, more traditional heroin-using populations," said study author David Frank, a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, according toWebMD. "In fact, they tend to have a pretty severe lack of knowledge and a lot of confusion about it, despite the fact that most have experienced overdoses within their drug-using network."

Researchers discovered that despite awareness of overdose, the majority of participants were unaware of any preventative measures to take in the cases of serious side-effects. While Naloxone is a drug that can reverse the signs of an overdose, many were unaware of where to get it or even how to use it.

"Stigma lies at the heart of the problems highlighted in this article," concluded Jack Stein, director of the office of science policy and communications at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). "Societal stigma against heroin abuse and associated ignorance about heroin addiction has prevented those who become addicted to prescription opioids from recognizing their abuse as similar to, and equally dangerous as, heroin abuse."