HowDunit - The Book of Poisons by Serita Stevens & Anne Bannon

Author:Serita Stevens & Anne Bannon [Stevens, Serita]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: book, ebook
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2006-12-26T08:00:00+00:00

DEXTROMETHORPHAN

OTHER: DXM.

TOXICITY: 3

FORM: Available as a powder, it is mostly ingested as a liquid cough syrup.

EFFECTS AND SYMPTOMS: Stumbling, dizziness, blurred vision, restlessness, hallucinations, stupor, coma, and respiratory depression can occur. Deaths usually occur when other drugs, particularly ethanol, are combined with it.

REACTION TIME: Fifteen to thirty minutes.

ANTIDOTES AND TREATMENTS: Activated charcoal is given; care is supportive.

NOTES: Widely available as a cough suppressant, when this substitute for codeine has caused trouble in the past, it was usually with small children drinking too much cough syrup. However, dextromethorphan is increasingly being abused by teens for its hallucinogenic effects at large doses.

The cough suppressant was patented in the 1950s and has been abused ever since. What is causing alarm is the rapid increase in abuse cases since 2000: One Los Angeles Times article from 2004 quoted California state poison control center officials as handling four times as many calls since 2000.

DXM is in a host of cold remedies, frequently combined with other medications. In a case of overdose of one of these combined drugs, it’s usually the other drug in the medication.

Because causing death is only a possibility, rather than a probability, with dextro-methorphan, a believable use of it as a weapon in your story will be difficult. It might be useful to cause hallucinations rather than death. Your fictional villain could mix up an overdose of grape cough syrup and soda water for the proposed victim.

CASE HISTORY

The Los Angeles Times article noted above reports two deaths from dextromethorphan, one involving a youth who died from an overdose, and the other when a young man, under the influence of that and other drugs, attacked and killed another man.

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