Your friend ODed. What's the *smart* thing to do?

Factual Questions
1

My only experience in this area is from movies, which we all know are great models to base events in our life on.

If it happened to a friend of mine my first thought would be “fuck”. Then it would be Run Away. Try to get out of there as fast as possible and not get caught.

My second (or third?) thought would be a moral obligation to get him to a hospital or something. I always thought that it was legal to drop someone off at the ER and skidaddle (provided it wasn’t because you shot him or something), but a couple of people have recently told me no. In some towns I can imagine it would make good sense, giving temporary amnesty to drug users so that someone doesn’t have to die. On the other hand Good Samaritan-type laws generally make sense.

The example in Traffic, where the kids drop their friend off but immediately get pulled over by a cop, does not make this seem like a good option. Mostly because it thwarts Plan #1.

Obviously the best thing to do is to not start doing drugs in the first place (or to let your friends do it). I wish middle school Health education had, after they scared the crap out of you, given advice on saving lives like they should. Regardless if you’re using drugs or not, what is the smart thing to do in that situation?

2

I assume that you also are stoned at the time your friend OD’s and that’s why you’re contemplating leaving your friend to die.

Take your friend to the ER. Accompany him inside and at least tell someone what drugs y’all were doing. If you want to split after that, whatever. But don’t just slow down and push him out the door. The ER doctors are NOT law enforcement officers. They will not hold you against your will or turn you in to the police.

3

Also keep in mind that is not illegal to have done drugs in the past whether it was 20 minutes or 20 years ago. What is illegal is posession, distribution, etc. There are some complexities to this such as DUI obviously.

4

I’d imagine the best option is to call 911 or your local emergency-services number and let the health care professionals take care of it. Transporting people to the hospital yourself doesn’t seem like a great idea - you’re likely to be trying to go very fast, stressed out, and you might cause an accident. Then we just have more victims.

I’d also say, stick around until emergency medical services get there. It may be tempting to run away to avoid attention from police, but the more information you provide them, the more likely it is that they will be able to quickly work on saving your friend’s life. It will be much easier for them if they know which drug(s) were taken, in what quantities, and other events that led to the emergency.

If someone just wants to avoid entanglements with the law at the risk of their friend’s life, they really need a second look at their priorities.

5

Greetings, Ruckinge. Welcome to the Straight Dope. I hope the reference to “Dope” in the title isn’t the only thing which brought you to these sunny shores. :wink:

If you are looking for either legal or medical advice, you’re probably not going to get it on the Boards.

That being the case, I would suspect that this is more a matter of opinion than settled fact, which means that this will probably end up in “IMHO” (In My Humble Opinion).

If you’re going to do drugs, or hang around with people who are doing drugs, the possibility of getting in trouble is part of the deal. Period. You can get in a boatload more trouble for leaving someone to die than you are likely to get for calling for help.

If the kind of trouble you refer to is “Trouble with Mom and Dad” rather than “Trouble with John Law,” (a possibility which your reference to Middle School health eduction brings to mind), may I suggest that you are way too young to be screwing around with drugs? If you can’t wrap your head around the fact that you may have to deal with an O.D. and take whatever consequences which develop, you should not be putting yourself into this situation.

The “Oh, #$%^!” option (run like hell and never look back) is a lousy idea. First of all, if you don’t care about the people you are with enough to at least call an ambulance from a pay phone before you get out of Dodge, you probably need either new friends or a new soul, and you certainly need a new hobby. At the very least, you should consider why you are using drugs around people who you don’t care about, and who, presumably, don’t care about you, either. If your relationship with these people is so superficial that your fear of authorities outweighs fear for their lives, you should be damned careful, because the acquaintances you are with might well take off and leave YOU to die if YOU happen to be the one who O.D.s. If, on the other hand, you yourself don’t actually TAKE drugs, your presence among people who do leaves you in the unenviable position of “automatic designated driver.” In any event, you are responsible. Period. It stinks, but there it is.

Call an ambulance. Particularly if you are screwed up yourself, do NOT drive the person to the hospital. Assuming that they have no reason to believe that their own personal safety is at risk, the ambulance drivers will be interested in keeping your friend alive, not in whatever illegal stuff you may be up to (other than wanting to know exactly what drugs your friend took.)

FWIW, when I drove a friend to the hospital in similar circumstances the only thing the nurses wanted to know was who she was, what she took and (in case I happened to know) what insurance she had. I probably should have called the ambulance instead, but she lived only about a mile or so from the hospital, and she did not appear to be in imminent danger of death. (I don’t doubt that she could have easily ended up dead if left to her own resources. I know this girl very well.)

6

Actually I think it was the suitcase nuke question. Earlier I got some decent advice on using a webserver off of my computer (best to purchase it on someone else’s).
No, I’m not a druggie (can’t afford it silly wink)* but that question has really been bugging me bad for the last month if not longer. Watching Traffic triggered the thought “I wonder what you’re actually supposed to do…”, which is why I mentioned it earlier.

The middle school thing was a poor reference to the Health class I assume everyone born since the mid-seventies took that focused more on scaring the beejezus out of you for everything from aspirin to black tar heroin. How effective that truly is I’m not sure and it’s probably something for Great Debate, but in wondering about this question to myself it sure did seem like they never give you any useful advice.

That said you gave a good post with some really good general advice :).
*Not “too old” to pick it up, but I’ve gone through minor pot use before, too scared of harder stuff, and grew out of it.

7

Testing positive for illegal an drug is all that’s necessary in some jurisdictions for conviction of a possession charge. Also note that some jurisdictions do crimnalize mere ingestion.

8

I know that the OP was just making an idle question, but I’d like to emphasize the point that there’s a lot more an EMT or paramedic can do for someone than run red lights in the big truck – they can give someone who has OD’ed on heroin Narcan, for instance, and keep them alive longer than you can. It’s best to call 911 – and stick around to answer questions and help the medics. The medics or the ER docs aren’t going to worry much about ratting out a patient’s friends.

And FYI, you should know that overdose scene in Pulp Fiction is bullshit on a number of levels. Injecting adrenaline into the heart is useless and dangerous, and trying to do it through the breastbone will most likely only break the needle anyway.

9

I know that the OP was just making an idle question, but I’d like to emphasize the point that there’s a lot more an EMT or paramedic can do for someone than run red lights in the big truck – they can give someone who has OD’ed on heroin Narcan, for instance, and keep them alive longer than you can. It’s best to call 911 – and stick around to answer questions and help the medics. A heroin overdose is not going to be fixed by a cold shower or coffee or just waiting it out.

And FYI, you should know that overdose scene in Pulp Fiction is bullshit on a number of levels. Injecting adrenaline into the heart is useless and dangerous, and trying to do it through the breastbone will most likely only break the needle anyway.

10

As above.

When you call the ambulance, state that it concerns a narcotics overdose.

Stay with the person.

Watch out for the needle(s), it might scratch you.

11

This may be true, but my understanding is that the police are not allowed to use the results of your medical work-up in the ER. If they want to test you, they have to get a warrent, or your permission. This goes for drug screens as well as blood alcohol levels. If they were allowed to use hospital test results and word got out on the street, no junkie would ever come to the Emergency Room for anything.

12

See also Cecil’s column: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050218.html

13

First, IANAL. Best thing to do is call 911, and flush the stash down the toilet. This gets rid of any possible evidence against you. Then tell paramedics what your friend ODed on.

14

Was the OD in Pulp Fiction a heroin OD? What junkies would have epinephrine handy, but not nalaxone?

15

Hey, they’re junkies. What they do doesn’t have to make sense.

I was amused by the board games Operation and Life in the backround.

16

It seems to me that you’d want to save the stash so it can be analyzed to see what caused the overdose, since it’s not likely to be pure.

17

What you suggest is evidence tampering in many locations. A local woman just got sentenced to 5 years for doing exactly what you suggest in an identical situation.

Simple possession would have probably gotten her a suspended sentence or probation as a first-time offender. In many jurisdictions, you are advising substituting a felony for a misdemeanor.

18

In Canada at least the police can subpeona our specimens to have them re-analyzed at their own lab. I’ve been told that any lawyer could easily get the results dismissed as there was no proper chain of evidence storage for those specimens before the po-po came and subpeonaed (sp?) them. Also, with things like alcohol that are volatile, having a sample sit around for a week or two will probably not give any result worth having.

19

Exactly right and probably similar to the policy in many US states. IANAL, so I can’t say for certain, but what they can’t do is come to the hospital and get all the urine tox screens from the last week and go arrest the people with positive tests. There has to be some reasonable suspicion to get a warrent or a subpeona for those results. But the MD would never call the police for a positive test.

20

Go ahead and call 911.

I don’t know anything about the legal aspects but I have been an EMT/Paramedic for about two decades, and in my experience the caller generally doesn’t get too much of a hassle. The cops here are pretty overworked and generally don’t want to waste time busting a citizen who calls in an OD.

From what I’ve seen, the cops figure that anyone who waits for 911 probably isn’t a dealer and has already gotten rid of their stash. Also, most of the cops that I work with view junkies as small fry that tend to remove themselves from the equation sooner or later anyways. As long as they’re not obviously carrying, the caller is usually left alone.

I should note that I work in a medium sized city with a bit of a drug problem, so YMMV.