This is, unfortunately, based on a real event. A youngish man (38) was found dead, in his home. There were no signs of foul play, and no drug paraphernalia found in the home. He’d had some acquaintance with drugs in his past, but had to the best of everyone’s knowledge been clean for about a year. The coroner’s report said he died of a heart attack or stroke, related to drug use. (I am going on second-hand information here, so I’m not sure of the exact wording of the findings.)
I know that stroke or heart attack can occur while someone is actively using this stuff, but is it more likely that in this case he was still secretly using the junk or that this was a the result of damage done in the past?
Not looking for medical or legal advice, just wondering how long the effects of this awful habit will last in the body.
It is going to be virtually impossible to say in this case. Drugs certainly don’t do a body good and effects could potentially last for the rest of a peron’s life. To very general, they can permanently weaken certain body structures like the brain or cardiovascular system. Heroin has a few potentially serious longterm effects and cocaine has some that could happen in certain cases as well. Those effects wouldn’t be all that typical though. The body is resilient and starts to heal from drugs right away. The first few months to a year result in a great deal repair.
That said, 38 year olds keel over on their own from heart attacks too. A history of cocaine use wouldn’t help that any.
A somewhat likely scenario is that he quit for a while and relapsed and going back to his former use (cocaine in particular) stressed his cardiovascular system and he died. There is no way to know but that is fairly common.
Thanks for the info. It’s a pretty sad thing regardless. To all appearances he seemed to have finally found a place he liked and he was well regarded in his workplace at the time. Friends and family who knew about his past difficulties and unwise decisions had been glad for him that he’d finally put those problems behind him, but for one reason or another it didn’t work out that way.
Heart attack and stroke are very different things, and would be easily distinguishable by any reputable coroner. Yet this coroner couldn’t tell the difference, but was still able to somehow determine that it was “related to drug use”? Seems extremely unlikely.
I’d think it more likely that your “second-hand information” was not accurate.
Yes, indeed. My second-hand information was that it was either a heart attack or stroke. The *messenger * did not remember which. I’m sure that the coroner knew. We tend to think it was a stroke since the unfortunate deceased had been having dreadful headaches for several days before the event.
I also don’t know whether the relation to drugs was based on the presence of such material within the body, or to damage done to the heart, brain or blood vessels by the previous use of these substances; hence, my question.
I’m also guessing (IANAD) that it would be pretty unusual for a person to suffer both a stroke and a heart attack in the same episode, but again, I am no expert.
It’s well established that chronic cocaine use damages the entire cardiovascular system, and the report claiming that coke doesn’t play a part in hardening in the arteries is misleading. Maybe the arteries aren’t hardened, but the heart is enlarged, and blood vessels throughout the body are damaged. Essentially, regular cocaine use prematurely ages the entire cardiovascular system, and the damage doesn’t disappear with a cessation of use.