A person with a substance use disorder might obtain fentanyl by misusing prescribed medication or acquiring the drug from an illegal laboratory. Misuse of fentanyl includes taking it orally, smoking https://ecosoberhouse.com/ it, snorting it, or injecting it. In this article, we will discuss the medical uses of fentanyl and its side effects. We will also cover misuse of fentanyl, addiction, and the risk of overdose.

• If you have been prescribed fentanyl, never give anyone else this medicine.
• In 2022, the DEA seized more than 50 million street pills laced with fentanyl — more than twice as many in 2021.

How do you treat a fentanyl overdose?

This is why it is so important to administer naloxone as soon as possible. Fentanyl is a prescription opioid used to treat moderate to severe pain, but it can be misused, abused, and cause overdose deaths when obtained how long does fentanyl stay in your system illegally. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid medicine that is up to 100 times stronger than other opioids like morphine, heroin, or oxycodone. Fentanyl is from the class of medicines called narcotic analgesics.

• When people take these drugs but aren’t aware that they contain fentanyl, they place themselves at risk of overdosing on a substance they didn’t even know they were taking.
• If a person appears to experience overdose symptoms again, they may require another dose.
• You cannot overdose on illicit fentanyl powder just by touching it, as it must get into your blood to get to your brain, according to the Tennessee Dept. of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
• Although most often used to cut powdered opiates, fentanyl is also used to cut pills and drugs like cocaine, ketamine, methamphetamines (like ADHD pills), and benzodiazepines (like Xanax).

Notable deaths

He was treated by EMTs with naloxone, and his mental status and respiratory rate improved. His brother reported that the boy had taken a blue tablet labeled “M30,” which the boy believed to be oxycodone. A urine test was positive for both fentanyl and cocaine (from Joynt & Wand, 2021). Fentanyl can last for a few hours when taken orally or when snorted, smoked, or injected.

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For those taking fentanyl in nonmedical settings, there is no medical team available to monitor someone’s breathing rate in real time to ensure their safety. Physicians like me have seen a rise in unintentional fentanyl use from people buying prescription opioids and other drugs laced, or adulterated, with fentanyl. Heroin users in my community in Massachusetts came to realize that fentanyl had entered the drug supply when overdose numbers exploded. In 2016, my colleagues and I found that patients who came to the emergency department reporting a heroin overdose often only had fentanyl present in their drug test results.

CDC’s Efforts to Use Data for Overdose Prevention

Prescription drugs sold online or by unlicensed dealers that are marketed as OxyContin, Vicodin, Adderall, Ritalin and Xanax are often laced with it. About 40 percent of seized fake pills laced with fentanyl contained enough to potentially cause an overdose, according to a small analysis by the Drug Enforcement Administration. That is why it’s so important to only take pills that come from a licensed pharmacy. If you get pills or other drugs that weren’t prescribed by your doctor and weren’t administered by a licensed pharmacy, you should assume they have fentanyl in them, Dr. Banta-Green noted. Put another way, you have a much shorter window of time to intervene and save a person’s life during a fentanyl overdose than a heroin overdose, said Jermaine Jones, a behavioral neuroscientist who studies substance use disorders at Columbia University. People who use drugs might not be aware they are taking fentanyl, yet the reality is that fentanyl-laced drugs are prevalent.

Efforts to prevent fentanyl overdoses