Oxycodone With Xanax Fatal Combination

Why do so many people here in Florida die after taking Oxycodone with Xanax - what makes the combination a fatal dose?

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Xanax is a Benzodiazepine and Oxycodone is a narcotic opiate, this means that both of them can cause central nervous system depression.

When someone uses high doses of both of them, at the same time, the CNS depression results in problems, such as lowered heart rate, lowered blood pressure and a very slow rate of breathing. In many instances, they pass out from the combination, being unconscious or asleep also depresses the central nervous system, your body functions normally slow down when resting. The combination can result in everything just slowing down too much and it causes their heart to just stop. They basically stop breathing and go into cardiac arrest.

This is the cause of death is the largest percentage of overdose cases.

Are there any questions or comments?

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My daughter was being treated for depression and given many different meds and oxy for pain from fibromyalgia. The final cocktail was valium/oxy and she died. My only child. 3 months later, my 2 friends of 40 years passed. My brother passed suddenly and 2 wks later, my husband died. I was left totally alone. I was grief stricken and prescribed zoloft/ambien. Zoloft made me shake so bad I couldn't write my name. I called the Dr and told him I was imagining invisible objects in my home and he took me off Ambien and prescribed Buspar. Within 3 days, I was twitching and muscle spasms so bad I could hardly breathe. I went to ER and they sent me to mental hospital which was traumatic experience. My Dr said I should never have been sent to mental hospital because I was suffering bereavement. The hospital prescribed remeron, xanax, ambien and neurontin. I could hardly walk. I stopped the meds but now suffer anxiety and can't sleep. I don't trust any of these drugs or the doctors.

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I'm so very sorry to hear of your losses, I thought at first I was reading my own post or my moms learned how to use a computer, lol! I'm only laughing because she could never use a computer. Your stories sound lots of like but her loss was that of a son, then her brother & then the youngest brother to TBI. I wish you & everyone else the best, surely you remember when the people regulated what we took & their was no physicians, or others FDA, AMA, etc.., to tell us different. Its all about the dollar, & the invention of morphine & then into H, FOREVER CHANGED MEDICINE AS MAN KNEW OF IT, now doctors were kings, even gods. For they held the power of what had aimed man for thousands of years, it's strange how our very own bodies ever have the near similar components to morphine & other opiate byproducts in them. I just read a great book by Hogshire, never done H & never would but the science & history to this most marvelous plants is indeed truly a miracle, itself from a savior from god in less than one hundred years, to being the demon it's looked at as of now.

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H hydrochloride is an essential medication for any doctor, and is first choice analgesic in heart attack and serious road traffic accidents. I can not understand how any country could class it as having 'no clinical use' and put it in Sch 1 - similarly the superb analgesics dipipanone (Duconal, Wellconal) and dextromoramide (Palfium), without which we would have very few medications for moderate to severe pain. The H (diamorphine) HCl 10mg tablets are not as useful as, say, Oxynorm, because bioavailability is very low. Whereas with oxycodone 20-30mg is fine for me, I would need FIVE x 10mg Diamorphine to get the same pain relief.

It is not just Oxycodone and alprazolam that kills people. You will find that if you look at records, the majority of deaths involving opioids involve methadone hydrochloride but opioids alone rarely kill. Verwon is correct that benzodiazepines and barbiturates add to the respiratory depression which is caused by opiate/oid medicines, but death should not occur unless abuse is part of the story, taking far too much of each; also there is the number of opioid naïve people who take a lot of alprazolam, diazepam or lorazepam or whatever and then take a quantity of an opioid which is more than enough to kill anyone unused to it. Methadone having a cumulative action and being very lipid soluble with an extremely long half life is no surprise as being the major offender. The U.S. physician's recent trend of prescribing up to 40mg methadone twice daily (really no need to take more than once) is going to see even more of these deaths.

OXYCODONE is actually, like H, a very benign and safe drug, but should not be taken in ridiculously high amounts. You will find on reading post-mortem reports that the amount found in the deceased' blood is always well above any recognized clinical levels. The highest available unit dosages of each are: oxycodone, 120mg in the brand name Oxycontin m/r tablet, and diamorphine, 500mg in the Rx vials of powder for reconstitution (very short shelf life at pharmacy means the user should make up the solution immediately before use).

Morphine sulphate also causes a lot more respiratory depression and General sedation than oxycodone, and so one would expect to see higher proportions of accidental 'recreational' overdoses with that. But the principle remains. Two drugs with that effect seem to have more than the sum of their parts in terms of dangerous resp depression. Barbiturates (Secobarbital sodium, AMOBARBITAL sodium etc.) are a lot worse than the relatively safe alprazolam, bromazepam, diazepam etc.

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I take oxycodone (by mouth) and xanax and have never had a problem. The reason people die from this combination is bc of one word: TOLERANCE. The thing is both of these drugs are very strong and have a very strong effect on the respiratory system. Let's say your someone whose NEVER used these drugs and your hanging with some fool who has been taking LOADS of both, he might take two 30mg of oxycodone and two 2mg xanax tablets and be fine bc his body, heart and respiratory system are used to this combo...he has grown a TOLERANCE for it little at a time..Now he offers it to you (or someone who has never taken either or just one of the drugs,or even just a tiny bit) He'll say "just take em man...you saw me just take em and I'm fine"!!! You take them and your body says "Whoa!!! What is this"?? And you breathing gets slower, your heart rate slows down and if its strong enough your respiratory system is depressed all the way and you DIE! That's bc you had no TOLERANCE.

I was Rx'd 0.5 mgs of xanax in 1999 for anxiety n depression and in 2002 I was hurt on the job and was prescribed 7.5mg percocet (oxycodone) I took them together and had no problem cause for one it was a pretty small dose and also I had built up a tolerance to the xanax for two yrs before I even took oxycodone. Over the next 15 yrs the dosage has been raised to percocet 10/325 mg 3 times a day and xanax 2mg twice a day. If someone took that dosage for the first time yes,it could be fatal..but I've built up a tolerance to both medications gradually over 15 years.

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I've been taking 2 mg xanax with 8mg dilaudid or 10 mgs opana for four years without problems. xanax 2x's per day with 8mg dilaudid every six hours and 50 mcg fentanyl patches. The combination is safe if taken responsibly as prescribed.

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Lord Lord I have been on Zanax and oxycodone for over 2 yrs

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Re: Helena (# 2)

So sorry for your loss. Terrible what happened to you after too! You're still alive. I hope you can receive the right counselling and find some sort of happiness in your life! God bless!

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Re: Sean (# 6)

There you go, according to Sean who is very educated mixing all these medicines is completely safe

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