If a dot of fentanyl can kill you, how do we use it in medicine, and how do people get addicted?

450 viewsChemistryOther

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

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s like saying why using saw on yourself in garage bad when surgeon use saw in controlled environment is necessary.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Have you ever made a batch of pancakes that you didn’t mix well enough, so you wound up getting a bite with a nasty blot of baking powder in it? The bowl of batter overall had the right amount of baking powder in it, but it wasn’t evenly distributed.

Legal Fentanyl is highly regulated, and manufactured by Fortune 100 companies with a lot to lose, and the resources necessary to ensure consistent mixing. When you get Fentanyl in the OR, your anesthesiologist has a professionally-manufactured ampule of Fentanyl in solution, and if it says 1ug/ml, then she knows that giving you 5ml will deliver 5ug of the active ingredient. This is also how she is able to dose herself exactly once she’s become addicted to it.

Illegal pills containing fentanyl are like the pancake batter. Assuming that the criminal cooks are aiming for a non-lethal dose, and assuming that they know exactly how many pills will come out of a mixing bowl of powder, and assuming they know how to multiply, they’ll multiply the dose they intend to deliver per pill by the number of pills the batch will make, and then put that much Fentanyl in the mixing bowl. They’ll run the mixer for a while, and then make pills out of the batter. Some pills will have about the right dose, some won’t have as much as planned, and a few will be like the bite of baking powder, and those will kill the person who takes them.

https://www.dea.gov/resources/facts-about-fentanyl

Anonymous 0 Comments

Had to get a bone marrow biopsy from my hip. Was given a Benadryl and .125 micrograms of fentanyl. The only part of the procedure that I wasn’t asleep for was when I felt someone pushing me down into the table to drill the hole, and I didn’t feel any pain just felt like someone was pushing down in my hip. Walked out of the procedure and was normal within an hour or so and it was the Benadryl that was messing me up. So yeah fentanyl is great stuff when used in small doses in a hospital setting.