designer street drugs lab tests?

[rn-jane]

Last night I admitted a 16year old boy from youth juvenile jail facility who was admitted with psychosis r/o drug overdose. HE had been found with a stash of drugs containing according to the guard a baggie of ectasy and acid and had shoved it up his rectum to hide it. None of the serum or urine drug test came up positive, but according to his heart rhythm, cardiac enzymes there was definitely an over dose going on. I know ectasy doesnot show up in a serum lab test, what other tests are available to detect it???

Also has anyone encountered any young drug overdosers chewing on duragesic patches, yes you heard me right. I've had 3 people this month alone with these od's, never normally get these types of patien ts, but tends to be a trend lately in my area.

[mario_ragucci]

Designer street drugs are reality. Youngsters usually try anything they can (they're supposed to within reason). I would like to know if there is a test for any "microdot" substance. Kids gain instant respect and notiarity when they do things like move or sell drugs. I'd like to know if there is a test for "anything that should not occur naturally" beyond selective testing.

Chewing a duragesic is sick and wrong. Fentynl is strong opiod. Thank you narcan, and other opiod antagonists :-(

Also, I heard, that LSD type drugs go into you CSF or something. You've heard of people having "flashbacks?" I heard the flashback is the drug coming out of your spinal nerves. Whats up with that :-)

[colleen10]

Sorry, don't know about the blood testing or chewing on patches but I wanted to add information about a new teen drug epidemic story that ran on my local news channel. I found it very interesting because this is the first I have heard of it.

The story said that many teens in our area and nation wide are taking to ingesting large amounts of an OTC cold remedy. It's dextromethorphan/Coricidin, the effects are getting high and in very large amounts hallucinations, of course followed by liver damage and potentially death. Many chase the pills with alcohol to increase the effects.

Teens call it "Skittling" because the pills are red, shaped and look just like red "Skittles" candy.

If you do a search for Skittling you will come up with a lot of information.

[candiceRN2B04]

i have always heard that acid can only be detected by testing spinal fluid. i dont know about ecstasy - i didnt know it didnt show up in serum tests

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

Sometimes it is a matter of just treating the symptoms - we have OD's here who go around the yard smaking/chewing plants to see what makes them high

[nowplayingEDRN]

I did a search on Dogpile.com on ecstacy testing and here are some of the links that I came up with. I hope that some of them may prove to be helpful.

http://www.ecstacy-testing.com/

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma_faq_testing_kits.shtml

http://www.drugwar.com/news7.shtm

http://www.ecstasydata.org/

http://www.correctionsdrugtesting.com/ecstasy_drugtest_results.htm

http://www.streetdrugs.org/

[nowplayingEDRN]

PS: The problem with Ecstacy is that it is not a pure drug but rather usually mixed with other drugs. The most dangerous ecstacy tablet contains methamphetamine. I do agree with Gwenith, treating an OD is usually treating the symptoms unless there is a specific antidote, in addition to activated charcol (BLECH! )