It's International Overdose Awareness Day today. For me, it was yesterday.

[Liberal Veteran]

I am kinda numb right now.

Got home from work yesterday, just in time for my husband's phone to ring. It was his brother's sometimes girlfriend asking us to go to his job site a couple of miles away. She said brother-in-law called and sounded strange.

He had taken a bunch of prescription pills and was not well.

Nobody would call 911 (which still is a total WTF moment). Since I had no idea exactly where to send help, I got in the car with hubby to go there and expressly told him that I was going to call for help 911 the moment I got to the site.

When I got there, he was slumped over the steering wheel alternating in a semi-delusional state.

Called 911 so they could home in on my phone and finally knew the approximate address to give dispatch.

As near as I could determine, he had mixed several prescriptions together in much greater amounts than he should have taken. Gave that info to dispatch to pass along to EMTs.

Kept him awake and comfortable while waiting for them to arrive. They assessed the situation and got him admitted to the ER. They had to sedate him in the ER.

Once he was asleep. Went back to the job site to retrieve his car and belongings to bring them to his home (he lives with his father and had the unenviable task of explaining the situation to my father-in-law who has his hands full already dealing with a very sick spouse (she is bedridden with alzheimer's).

Brother-in-law is now on 72 hour psych hold, but stable.

Lord, I am tired right now.

[mahina]

1. So sorry LV.

Hoping things get much better for your family soon

[mr_lebowski]

2. Overdose avoidance ... don't drink & drug, don't mix ... take one drug only

You'll almost surely NOT die from any single drug ... unless you're injecting. So don't do IV drugs!

Few other tips:

Get drugs only from known sources, and know exactly what the friggin stuff is supposed to look like, and how many milligrams it is if a pill.

Start very slow if for some reason you don't 100% know what you're taking. Or better yet, never take shit you don't know for sure what it is.

[Kali]

3. having jsut spent the last couple weeks on antibiotics and pain meds I have to say...

get set up with a good system to monitor what you are doing! either those geezer daily/hourly compartment boxes or something that will help you keep track of what and when. I was just dealing with two meds, so I was writing it down but there were still times I had to really think, did I write it and then forget to take it? I can't imagine how somebody taking a lot of meds can keep track of it all and still manage work and the rest of life.

Just eating on a rigid schedule (needed to have empty stomach 4 times per day, night not so rough but day was harder than I thought it would be!) was driving me a little nutty.

[mr_lebowski]

5. You won't OD from accidentally taking 2 of a pill in like a 6 hour period

Instead of 1. Obviously you want to be careful, but the margins of error aren't that thin, with any drug I'm aware of (not offering medical advice here, there may be SOME) ... certainly not opioids.

OD'ing on opioids (w/o drinking or taking other depressants) is more along the lines of taking 3-5X more than what your body is accustomed to ...

I mean, unless you're already taking REALLY large amounts, or just had your dosage raised significantly. Like, if you were on OC40 mg and your doc raised you to OC80mg, and a day or two later you messed up and took 2 of those in an hour?

You might be in serious trouble then cause you're then at 4X what you're used to, and these aren't small-time doses. IOW, that's 32 percocets instead of 8 percocets. That's pretty significant.

Still, very good advice

[Kali]

6. or just mixing anything that shouldn't be

yeah I get you on dosing, but it was disconcerting to be so uncertain as to what I had taken or not

[mr_lebowski]

7. Alcohol is the killer one, man ... alcohol + any CNS depressant ... bad news ...

I've known this since I was like 10 years old, in the 1970's. How anybody doesn't know this just blows my mind.

That baseball player they just released autopsy for yesterday, found dead in his hotel room ... oxy, fentanyl ... and ETHANOL.

Don't know the dosages, but kid quite probably sleeps it off if he'd not been drinking. Booze has such a strong synergistic effect with CNS depressants. Well over 50% of opioid OD's involve alcohol.

[Kali]

8. not to mention the damage of it alone

not that it should be banned or anything, but it is certainly dangerous and destructive without mixing other drugs into the situation.

[mr_lebowski]

9. As a raging alcoholic, no argument outta me ...

I can feel this breakfast vodka/red bull killing me as we speak ...

[Hekate]

4. I am so sorry, LV. I hope your BIL and all the family come out of this okay some day.

[Niagara]

10. I'm sorry, this had to be frightening for you and your family

Sending hugs