I’ve always heard that a singular dot of fentanyl can kill you. Yet we use it medically, for pain relief. And many people are addicted to it but stay alive while using. Is there like a different method of using it? How do people use it and not die?
In: Chemistry
There is an “effective dose”, or the amount required to achieve therapeutic effects. This dose increases with tolerance. There is also a “lethal dose”, which also increases with tolerance. The amount to achieve the desirable effects and the amount required to achieve lethal affects over time gets closer and closer together as tolerance increases. The body can only tolerate so much before essential systems are too impaired. Both doses involve achieving a certain concentration of the substance in the body (blood, or possibly another fluid or part of the body). Very potent drugs can be made safer my limiting the ability to form a hazardous concentration of the substance in the body. This can be achieved by limiting the absorption rate (via dermal patches), by limiting the total amount of substance (such as a pill with a fixed, tested, and reproducible manufacturing process containing a therapeutic amount), or by diluting the compound so that one can administer it realistically with available measuring equipment. Street drugs are high purity and users lack the proper education, skills, and equipment to safely dose them selves. Pharmaceuticals are subject to rigid testing and standards that ensure the purity and strength (and identity) of substances, and the ways of dosing them are also tested. Fentanyl cannot be accurately dosed by visual inspection, even in experienced users.
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