Overdosing with Opioids

The government released a statistic that approximately half of all drug poisoning deaths registered in 2020 were related to opioids, with this number making up 2263 of the 4561 in total. The most typical way of overdosing with opioids is simply taking too much of the drug than your body can handle. Because opioids have inhibitory tendencies, taking too much of an opioid can slow down a person's breathing so that they can pass out. If the dose is great enough, this reduction in breathing alone can cause the person to die. However, in cases where the person is simply unconscious, other dangers come into it, such as blocking of the airway, for example, from vomit. As a person takes a drug for a prolonged period of time, they can build up what's called a drug tolerance. This means that they will need a larger amount of the drug to produce the same effect. Drug tolerance is not solely limited to opioids but can happen with many different drugs, prescription, over the counter, or illegal.

After getting clean, for example, going through rehab, relapse can be very dangerous if the person has built up a drug tolerance. This is because, whilst getting clean, the body loses this tolerance to the drug. Consequently, if the patient takes the same dose that they were taking before they got clean, the body will no longer be able to process the same amount. As such, the person is at risk of overdosing.