HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: RYAN LEE
COMMENTS |
| 
Whether they’re taking club drugs, HIV medications or sleeping pills, a good number of gay men fancy themselves as at-home pharmacologists. In smaller doses, drug use indeed equips a person with a certain knowledge of how a substance interacts with his or her body, said Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York.
But the confidence that comes from casual drug use can leave people unaware of, and unprepared for, the potentially dangerous ways different chemicals are processed in their body simultaneously, Levounis said.
“The biggest thing we’re seeing is the issue of synergy,” Levounis said, describing instances of one drug plus another drug equaling the effects of three.
“When you have two drugs that have similar results, but they do that through different pathways in the body, we have a much bigger effect than either of the drugs would have by itself,” said Levounis, who is also the chief of the division of Addiction Psychiatry at St. Luke’s & Roosevelt Hospitals in New York.
The death of actor Heath Ledger, 28, who reportedly had prescription drug bottles for sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication surrounding him when police found his body Jan. 22, is a vivid reminder that chemicals can take an unexpected toll even on those in the prime of their life. An official cause of death for the “Brokeback Mountain” star has not be determined, but the tragedy renewed discussions about accidental overdoses.
“It’s especially important for people to really be honest with their doctor with what they’re taking, and how they’re taking it,” said Mark Tanner, a physician at Family Health Care of Atlanta. “Don’t think over-the-counter drugs don’t count. Just because it’s over-the-counter doesn’t mean it’s harmless.”
For example, the non-prescription St. John’s Wort is known for reducing the metabolism of some anti-HIV drugs, lessening their affect and putting a person at risk for developing a drug-resistant strain of HIV, Tanner said. HIV medications often slow or increase the metabolism of a variety of prescription and street drugs, which may cause someone to mistakenly compensate their drug use or avoid taking HIV meds.
Popular party drug combinations also carry some risk, like a string of deaths in gay men that were attributed to using Viagra and “poppers,” both of which drop a person’s blood pressure.
“The result is you can actually deprive your brain of blood,” Levounis said.
Complications can also arise from using cocaine with ecstacy, since both drugs speed up a person’s heart rate but through different mechanisms, or from combining cocaine use with crystal meth, he said.
“Especially in the context of dehydration,” Levounis says of mixing popular club drugs. “When you combine uppers and you dehydrate at the same time, you send your heart into a particularly dangerous position.”
Increasing the gamble of combining street drugs is that sometimes neither dealers nor users are fully aware of the make-up or potency of pills like ecstacy, Levounis said.
“It’s a huge, huge, huge variance of dosing from one little packet to another,” he said.
The combination of “downers” — such as the sleeping and anti-anxiety drugs reportedly found at Ledger’s death scene — has been one of the most dramatic developments in overdosing in recent years, Levounis said.
Taking prescription drugs like Valium, Xanax or Klonopin alongside other downers like heroin, methadone or GHB can depress a person’s respiratory system to dangerous levels.
Alcohol in particular should be avoided when using anti-depressants or sleeping medications, while marijuana has a relatively benign interaction with most prescription and street drugs, Levounis said.
|
