My Husband Died From Opiate Toxicity

My husband 6ft 279 pounds was left at the hospital labeled as JOHN DOE. As a result my husband died. The coroner office said the cause of death was Opiate Toxicity of Opiates. Which was morphine and codeine. Per the report it was 14.3ng/ML of morphine (Free) and less than 5ng/ML of codeine. I just don't understand how a person this size dies from morphine and codeine. From the information I have gathered this is not really a lot of meds compared to his size. The way my husband's death took place, nothing is adding up. My husband had a problem with illicit drugs not pain pills, so I'm clueless to what happened to my husband. Any input and/or information will help.

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Hello, Alicia! How are you? I am so very sorry for your loss. That's so tragic!

Now, to explain this…

The level at which someone achieves opiate toxicity varies from person to person and is usually highly dependent on their tolerance. Thus, if your husband wasn't used to taking Morphine and Codeine, he could have taken relatively small amounts and still overdosed, regardless of his size.

They tend to cause depression of the central nervous system, which causes lowered rates of breathing, blood pressure and heart rate. For some people, even an average dose can be too much.

Which leads me to the next possibility, if he was usually abusing illicit drugs, he could have already caused damage to his lungs and heart, then adding the Morphine and Codeine was too much, even if they weren't in very high doses, and his body couldn't handle it, causing stuff to lower to the point of shut down.

The FDA and NIH both warn about such possibilities and how much danger they can put someone in.

People have even died from taking the usual average doses of medications, because they just combined too many of them. This can cause the body to go into shock, because it doesn't know which signal to respond to and how to process each, so it starts to shut down to try to protect itself.

I can't give you the specific reasons, since I'm not a doctor or pathologist and I know that really, no matter what I say, it isn't going to help you and make you feel better, which is entirely understandable. Everything I've said could also be completely off base and there may have been something else odd going on, I have no way of knowing. However, I am trying to explain some of the possibilities for you.

In reality, I just wish I could reach through my computer and hug you.

Is there anything else I can explain for you? Or if you don't understand something, please feel free to ask.

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