Drug use can lead to overdose and death

April 25, 2016

The world is still in shock concerning the sudden death of the American pop icon, Prince, who died last Thursday at 57.

According to the foxnews.com, “most speculation on his death has centred on his struggle with the flu, but new reports suggest he may also have suffered from an opioid overdose.”

The online portal adds that if that’s the case, the combination of a flu and opioid in a body could be deadly, as the respiratory illness and even a regular dosage of opioids can effectively depress the body’s ability to breathe.

An assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, Marc LaRochelle, notes that opioids can cause central nervous system depression, and they can decrease the respiratory rate.

“In the case of overdose, it slows breathing to where it may stop completely and the individual will have cardiopulmonary arrest,” LaRochelle warns.

Prince’s close associates confirm that he struggled with hip pain and had probably overdosed on certain prescription drug. So sad.

But while the cause of death of the talented singer is still being probed, we may need to know that use of drug without the supervision of a competent physician can spell doom for anyone.

Drug abuse comes in varying shapes. Sometimes, instead of returning to the hospital if they are not getting relief from their symptoms, some people simply continue to use their drugs, sometimes increasing the dosage without their doctor’s knowledge!

Drugs and diseases

A General Practitioner, Dr. Daniel Ogunboyejo, says people who use drugs, especially by injection, are at higher risk of dying from both acute and chronic diseases than people who do not use these drugs.

He said that fatal overdose and infection with HIV and other blood-borne viruses transmitted through shared needles and syringes are the most common causes of death in drug users.

According to the World Factbook, illicit drugs are broadly categorised into cannabis, hallucinogens, depressants and stimulants. Every drug of abuse fits under any of these categorisations, depending on their effects in the human system. Top on the list is tobacco — or its more modern presentation, cigarette.

Next is cannabis (Cannabis sativa), a common hemp plant with some sedative properties. Examples are marijuana, hashish and hashish oil.

Another group is hallucinogens. These are drugs that affect sensation, thinking, self-awareness, and emotion. The commonest form of hallucinogens is LSD, though there are other drugs under that category.

Depressants (sedatives) are drugs that reduce tension and anxiety and include barbiturates, among a long list of others.

Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine, amphetamines, ephedrine, ecstasy, methylphenidate and others.

Physicians say when a pregnant woman takes any of these illicit drugs, it can cause a baby to be born too small or too soon, or to have withdrawal symptoms, birth defects or learning and behavioural problems.

Worse still, they say, due to the sharp practices that attend their distribution, illicit drugs may be prepared with impurities that may be harmful to a pregnancy.

Abusive drugs have varying degrees of addiction, experts say. Next to methamphetamine, they say, cocaine creates the greatest psychological dependence of any drug.

“It stimulates key pleasure centres within the brain and causes extremely heightened euphoria. A tolerance to cocaine develops quickly, as the addict soon fails to achieve the same ‘high’ experienced earlier from the same amount of cocaine,” Ogunboyejo warns.

Psychologists contend that substance abuse carries many risks to adolescents and society. They say the effects and risks of substance abuse include traffic accidents, risky sexual behaviour, juvenile delinquency, sub-par academic performance, death or permanent injury or disability.

What about their effects on the brains of youngsters? Physicians warn that other effects, including developmental effects that hinder the proper development of the brain, can have a lifelong impact on a person’s ability to reason and/or use sound judgment.

“It could cause developmental problems in the adolescent brain,” Ogunboyejo says.

Adolescents are defined as children between the ages of 12 and 17.

At a public forum on drug abuse, Consultant Psychiatrist and ex-Medical Director of the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Lagos, Dr. Rahman Lawal, said cannabis use among adolescents could lead to permanent brain damage.

He said, “Teenagers who smoke cannabis regularly could be permanently damaging the development of their brain and are likely to end up with significantly lower IQ scores than teenagers who do not use the illicit drug.”

According to biologists, “Many important brain structures achieve much of their growth during adolescence. They say the prefrontal cortex, which controls planning, impulse control, risk assessment, consequence prediction, and organisation, develops in adolescence.

They further note, “The limbic system controls emotions, dreams and goals. The cerebellum controls coordination, movement, emotional maturity, and cognition or understanding. The corpus callosum controls the neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain and dictates how quickly we can access information. The hippocampus controls memory functions. Each of these essential parts of the brain primarily develops during adolescence. Interrupting the development of these brain functions can have lifelong effects.”

This corroborates a major study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which warns that cannabis use in adolescence can cause a significant long-term decline in IQ that does not appear to be reversible when people stop using it.

The bottom line: Don’t ruin your life with drug.