For more information, read about overcoming addiction. A drug overdose is taking too much of a substance, whether it’s prescription, over-the-counter, legal, or illegal. If you’ve taken more than the recommended amount of a drug or enough to have a harmful effect on your body’s functions, you have overdosed. For some people, coming so close to death can expose the harsh consequences of continuing to abuse drugs. However, if someone dear to you has survived a drug overdose and is still hesitant to seek treatment, you may need to hold a substance abuse intervention to convince them to get sober.

Lifestyle Quizzes

While it may seem like an agonizingly long wait for emergency personnel to arrive on the scene, they will likely arrive quickly and will take over. It is important to stay with the person until help arrives. If you misuse drugs, quitting is the best way for you to prevent a drug overdose. Know that certain ways of taking drugs can be riskier than others. Inhaling or injecting drugs may cause them to get to your brain more quickly and also increases your chance of using an amount that can severely harm you.

An overdose can occur if you swallow, snort, or inject fentanyl. Naloxone will not do any harm if given to someone who does not have opioids in their system. If how to help someone that has overdosed the person improves, place them on their stomach with their face and head turned to the side. Put their hand under their head and bend their knees for support. In Baltimore City alone, it’s saved more than 2800 lives.

• Signs and symptoms of an overdose will vary depending on the type and amount of drug that has been taken, as well as the person’s overall health at the time of taking the drug.
• East Point Recovery Center offers a clinical approach to drug addiction treamtent.
• Misusing prescription stimulants, such as Adderall, also increases the risk of overdose.
• They are constantly worried about the addict and worried about an overdose.

Recognizing Signs Of An Overdose

Drinking too much alcohol and too quickly is dangerous. Ignoring these symptoms and signs can lead to alcohol overdose.1 Abusing alcohol, in general, has certain short-term and long-term effects. When a person is suffering from an overdose, time is of the essence. Once you’ve recognized their symptoms and realize they are in grave danger, you must call for emergency help. The sooner you can make that call means the sooner they’ll get the emergency services they desperately need. While waiting for emergency services to arrive, stay with the person and put them on their side to prevent choking.

How You Can Help Save A Life With Naloxone

Intervening during an overdose is crucial, but it is equally important to address the underlying addiction that led to the overdose. Comprehensive treatment for substance abuse offers numerous benefits that can help prevent future overdoses and promote long-term recovery. In other words, the more alcohol in your system, the harder the body works to get rid of it to prevent alcohol poisoning. Alcohol is metabolized by the liver, whose main job is to detoxify chemicals and metabolize drugs. If you have consumed food before drinking, this will reduce the absorption of the alcohol and prevent overdosing on alcohol and other harmful effects. During a drug overdose, providing first aid before the ambulance gets to the scene could make a life-or-death difference.

You’re not protected if you witness the emergency and do not help the person. Law enforcement can also conduct investigations and gather evidence as it does not apply to drug felonies or other crimes not listed. The goal is to help someone experiencing an emergency overdose. If you witness a medical emergency caused by an overdose, call immediately. You’ll need to watch a 4-minute training video, answer a short quiz, and provide information to receive naloxone. If you don’t want the information texted to you through MDHope, there are other ways to find the closest naloxone provider in your area.

The Benefits of Treatment for Substance Abuse

• The severity of a drug overdose depends on the drug, the amount taken, and the physical and medical history of the person who overdosed.
• It’s easy to use and available without a prescription.
• If you have consumed food before drinking, this will reduce the absorption of the alcohol and prevent overdosing on alcohol and other harmful effects.
• During a drug overdose, providing first aid before the ambulance gets to the scene could make a life-or-death difference.
• If you aren’t sure, treat it like an overdose—you could save a life.

Illegal fentanyl is often mixed into street drugs like heroin, cocaine, and meth. Or it may be added to fake pills made to look like prescription medicines. There are free ways to dispose of old medications so you’re preventing substance use and protecting the environment. If you use prescription drugs, be sure to use them only as directed by your doctor. Do not combine any medications without first asking your doctor if it’s safe.

And, with drug use, there is always the risk of a deadly overdose. At Water Gap Wellness, we are dedicated to guiding you and your loved ones through the recovery process with compassion and professionalism. Our individualized treatment plans, expert staff, and holistic approach provide the support needed for lasting recovery.

Substance Use Disorder Signs

Here are some red flags that someone is experiencing a drug overdose. That’s why it’s often used as a filler in fake prescription pills or street drugs. If you use street drugs or fake pills, you may take fentanyl without knowing it. Fentanyl is a powerful pain medicine made in a lab (synthetic opioid).

However, if you do happen to have access to it, you should administer it to the individual as it will temporarily reverse the effects of the drug overdose. This drug will only work if opiods are present in the person’s system. This drug blocks the effects of the opiod on the brain which allows the person to stay conscious and breathing. Anyone with access to naloxone can administer the life-saving drug to someone who is overdosing.

The appearance of one or more of these symptoms means that the person is in serious trouble. When you notice any of these symptoms, it’s imperative to get help right away. The person’s life depends on your ability to act quickly. By calling the helpline you agree to the terms of use.

Families should have the life-saving medication on hand if they know someone struggling with opioid use disorder. It’s often added to other drugs because it’s so potent. Stigmas often prevent individuals from getting the help they need.

Anyone in need of assistance with mental health or substance use-related needs can call 988. If you have NARCAN® available, you can use it to provide immediate aid while waiting for medical personnel to arrive. Next Harm Reduction and the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition will also mail the life-saving medication to Maryland residents for free.

It is marked by an inability to stop using a substance despite the negative consequences that follow. When addiction takes hold, the risks of adverse effects, including overdose, increase significantly. Witnessing someone suffering from drug overdose can be very traumatizing. According to the Centers for Disease Control, overdose deaths have topped 100,000 annually. With such high statistics, it is important to know how to respond if you think you’re witnessing a drug overdose. Knowing what to do if you do observe a drug overdose will help you remain calm so you can help the person experiencing the overdose and get them the help they need.

Consuming alcohol beyond moderate levels (and for some individuals, even at moderate levels) can push blood pressure readings higher, especially when combined with other lifestyle factors like high sodium intake, lack of exercise, or obesity. Ultimately, if you don’t already drink wine, it is not recommended to start solely for its supposed heart benefits. If you do choose to enjoy red wine, moderation is key—typically defined as one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men, though even these guidelines can vary based on individual circumstances. Completely refraining from consuming alcohol lowers the risk of some of the health risks listed above. Although some of those effects can occur without alcohol consumption, avoiding alcohol helps decrease the risks.

• While some research shows that drinking in moderation is healthy, it’s likely that some of the connection comes from the fact that moderate drinkers, in general, have healthier lifestyles and diets.
• Alcohol has been shown to slow down parasympathetic nervous activity and to stimulate sympathetic nervous activity.
• Having more than three drinks in one sitting raises blood pressure for a short time.
• As a result, peripheral resistance and blood volume are increased, leading to elevated arterial blood.
• In this study, alcohol had no significant effect on DBP in the four groups.
• Dai 2002 gave participants five minutes to consume high doses of alcohol and measured outcomes immediately.

Stubbs 1995 published data only

However, the result was heterogeneous; therefore, we are unable to make any implications from this. Low‐dose alcohol consumption had no effect on blood pressure (BP) within six hours, but we found only two trials that studied this dose and no trials that assessed BP after six hours. Low‐dose alcohol increased heart rate (HR) within six hours, suggesting that even one glass of wine increases HR. Unfortunately, we found no studies measuring HR more than six hours after the dose.

This measurement takes into account the systolic blood pressure and the diastolic blood pressure. Alcohol consumption is a well-established contributor to elevated BP, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). The 2025 ACC/AHA High Blood Pressure Guideline recommends nonpharmacological management strategies for high BP, including abstinence or limiting alcohol intake to one or fewer drinks (12–14 g) daily for women and two or fewer drinks daily for men. According to the published protocol, we intended to include only double‐blind RCTs in this review. Because higher doses of alcohol exert specific pharmacological effects on drinkers, we had a few double‐blind RCTs after the first screening.

Rosito 1999.

On the other hand, Fantin 2016 allowed participants to continue drinking during the period of outcome measurement. These differences in alcohol consumption duration and in outcome measurement times probably contributed to the wide variation in blood pressure in these studies and affected overall results of the meta‐analysis. The dose of alcohol had to be reported by study authors for inclusion in the systematic review.

We recorded the washout period of each included study reported by study authors to decide if there was risk of a carry‐over effect. If it was appropriate to combine cross‐over trials with other trials, we used the recommended generic inverse variance approach of meta‐analysis. We tested the effect of cross‐over trials through sensitivity analysis by excluding them from the meta‐analysis to check if the effect estimate changed significantly.

Kojima 1993.

The method of blinding of participants and personnel was not mentioned in Dumont 2010, Mahmud 2002, and Maule 1993. In Cheyne 2004, participants were blinded to the content of the drink, but some reported that they were able to detect the alcohol by taste at the end of the study. It is recommended that there should be at least 10 studies reporting each of the subgroups in question (Deeks 2011).

Data collection and analysis

Alcohol prevents the body’s baroreceptors from detecting a need to stretch the blood vessels and increase their diameter, causing an increase in blood pressure. When blood pressure decreases, these receptors help minimize how much the blood vessels stretch to increase blood pressure. Similarly, when blood pressure increases, these receptors increase the stretching of the blood vessel walls in order to decrease blood pressure. However, regularly having more than 4 alcoholic drinks in a sitting can have a lasting effect on your health. Harlan Krumholz, MD, FACC, JACC Editor-in-Chief and Harold H. Hines Jr Professor of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, noted that the results challenge long-standing assumptions that low levels of alcohol do not meaningfully affect blood pressure.

Rosito 1999 tested the effects of 15 g, 30 g, and 60 g of alcohol on 40 young medical students. The decrease in SBP was greater with 30 g of alcohol seven hours after consumption compared to placebo and 15 g and 60 g alcohol‐consuming groups. In this study, alcohol had no significant effect on DBP in the four groups.

More RCTs are needed to study the effects of low‐dose alcohol to better delineate the dose‐response effects of alcohol on BP and heart rate. RCTs with measurements more than 24 hours after alcohol consumption are needed to see how long the effect of high‐dose acute alcohol consumption lasts. The magnitude and direction of the effects of alcohol on blood pressure depend on the time after alcohol consumption. Moderate‐certainty evidence shows that acute consumption of medium to high doses of alcohol decreases blood pressure within the first six hours and for up to 12 hours after alcohol consumption.

We also contacted Hering 2011, but the study author did not explicitly mention in the email the method of allocation concealment used. Different types of alcoholic beverages including red wine, white wine, beer, and vodka were used among 32 studies. The dose of alcohol ranged between 0.35 mg/kg and 1.3 g/kg, and alcohol was consumed over five minutes and over one hour and 30 minutes. It is important to note that the dose of alcohol was comparatively higher (≥ 60 g or ≥ 1 g/kg) in nine studies (Bau 2005; Buckman 2015; Hering 2011; Narkiewicz 2000; Rosito 1999; Rossinen 1997; Stott 1987; Van De Borne 1997; Zeichner 1985). The molecular mechanisms through which alcohol raises blood pressure are unclear. Alcohol can affect blood pressure through a variety of possible mechanisms.

Kawano 1992 published data only

• For medium doses and high doses of alcohol, participants represented a range in terms of age, sex, and health condition.
• Dumont 2010 measured blood pressure during the study period, but study authors did not provide the before and after measurement of SBP.
• In contrast, women eliminate alcohol from the body a little faster than men (Thomasson 2000).
• Research shows that regular use of acetaminophen can raise blood pressure, as can nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), including ibuprofen and naproxen.
• The blood alcohol level decreased over time, and 20‐HETE started to rise (Barden 2013).

Alcohol’s effects on blood pressure can range from temporary dips to chronic elevations that increase the risk of serious health problems. While a small glass of red wine might be part of a cultural tradition or family dinner, it’s essential to consume alcohol mindfully, balancing any potential benefits with the very real risks. Staying aware of your blood pressure readings, adopting a healthy lifestyle, and seeking professional guidance if you suspect an alcohol-related disorder can help safeguard your cardiovascular health.

It is a common substance of abuse and its use can lead to more than 200 disorders including hypertension. This review aimed to quantify the acute effects of different doses of alcohol over time on blood pressure and heart rate in an adult population. The authors noted that there was no overall increase in the risk of hypertension with any level of alcohol consumption for African Americans as a group, although in Black women, there was an association between light drinking and higher blood pressure. However, there were far fewer studies that focus on African Americans for the researchers to review, and more research may be needed. Heart rate was increased by 4.6 bpm six hours after drinking alcohol compared to placebo.

Comparison 1. Low‐dose alcohol vs placebo.

Most of the evidence from this review is relevant to healthy males, as these trials included small numbers of women (126 females compared to 638 males). We are aware of one systematic review on effects of alcohol on blood pressure that was published in 2005 (McFadden 2005). McFadden 2005 included both randomised and non‐randomised studies with a minimum of 24 hours of blood pressure observation after alcohol consumption. This systematic review searched only the MEDLINE database for relevant studies, hence it was not exhaustive.

We created a funnel plot using the mean difference (MD) from studies reporting effects of medium doses and high doses of alcohol on SBP, DBP, MAP, and HR against standard error (SE) of the MD to check for the existence of publication bias. Visual inspection of funnel plots shows that the effect estimate is equally distributed around the mean in Figure 4, Figure 5, Figure 6. In Figure 9, Figure 10, and Figure 11, we observed slight asymmetry in the funnel plot that was probably due to heterogeneity rather than to publication bias. We noted some overlap of data points in some funnel plots, indicating that some of the included studies were of similar size. According to Chapter 10 of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Higgins 2011), a funnel plot asymmetry test should not be used if all studies are of similar size.

You may have read that some alcoholic drinks, like red wine, are better for your health than others. But too much of any type of alcohol will negatively affect your blood pressure. “We focused on understudied groups, particularly women, light-to-moderate drinkers and consumers of different beverage types, to better understand how even low levels of alcohol consumption influence BP management, a critical public health issue.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines light drinking as three drinks or fewer per week and moderate drinking as no more than one drink per day for women and up to two per day for men. Experts have known for a while that heavy drinking — meaning eight or more drinks per week for women and 15-plus per week for men — raises your risk for high blood pressure (a.k.a. hypertension). When blood pressure, the force of blood flowing through your arteries, is consistently high, that ups your risk for heart attack, stroke how does alcohol affect blood pressure and heart failure, as well as vision loss and kidney disease.

Generally, these establishments are private and situated in tranquil neighborhoods, so people can de-stress and focus on their recovery. A recovery housing model gives inhabitants the opportunity to get and give support from their peers and leaders in the community. Understanding the sober living vs halfway house is crucial for selecting the appropriate recovery path. Sober living homes focus on personal responsibility and community support, while halfway houses provide more supervision and are often court-ordered. Sober living homes cater to individuals in recovery from substance abuse, regardless of their legal background. Halfway houses usually serve individuals transitioning from incarceration or court-mandated treatment programs.

What is a Sober Living Home

Residents can leave to attend work, family obligations, religious observation, 12-step meetings, etc. Residents can sober living vs halfway house expect random drug testing or alcohol screening to show that they are still sober. A typical participant will live at a halfway house for 3-12 months, with a maximum time limit of 12 months allowed for average residents. Federal prisoners are usually only approved for 12 months, but there is no limit to how long a federal prisoner may be placed in a halfway home. Halfway houses have a maximum residency of 12 months, which is different from the time limit for sober homes.

• Sober living homes have fewer rules than halfway houses, offering more freedom while still maintaining accountability.
• But these places can have significantly different rules, guidelines and affiliations.

Harnessing Serenity: The Therapeutic Power of Silicon Beach in Addiction Recovery

Learn when it’s the right time, what to expect from the structured therapy schedule, and how it… While both are transitional housing solutions for people in early recovery, their clientele, structure, staff, and funding differ. Back in the early 1900s, when a person received parole for good behavior, the court often ordered them to stay in one of these homes. There, the parolee would find gainful employment while living apart from harmful influences. Also, you what is Oxford House can typically stay as long as needed, depending on your needs and goals. Sober living is something you’ll have to pay for on your own, either through insurance or private pay.

Beyond the Basics: Innovative Recovery Journeys in Sober Houses

In Florida, State Attorney Dave Aronberg developed the Sober Homes Task Force to protect individuals with substance use disorders from exploitation in sober living homes. This task force works alongside the Florida Association of Recovery Residences (FARR), an organization that certifies recovery residences like sober homes according to national standards. While FARR is not a licensing authority, the organization does ensure that certified recovery residences provide quality services nationwide. Halfway houses are transitional living spaces for sober individuals who have either completed an addiction treatment program or finished serving time in prison.

• The model was meant to be more affordable, as all the residents share the cost of the rent and utilities and pay a very small fee to maintain membership in the Oxford House network.
• One such example is the Sober Living Network that was started in 1995 and currently represents 550 homes in Southern California.
• Use the SAMHSA program locator to find halfway houses in your area, or click here to learn more about treatment options.
• The term “halfway” reflects the role these facilities play—they serve as a middle ground between fully supervised care and complete independence.
• Halfway houses offer a dorm-like setting, while sober homes are in quiet residential areas and focus more on independent living.

These pioneering models address the need for personalized care, ensuring recovery pathways are as unique as the individuals they serve. Residents seeking beyond-the-norm recovery journeys will find such dynamic environments stimulating and transformative, providing them with the necessary tools for long-term success. Understanding sober housing terminology and models is vital for navigating the landscape of recovery housing. Terminology like ‘halfway houses’ and ‘transitional housing’ signifies different levels of support and independence among recovery residences. These frameworks often integrate creative approaches, such as vocational training or skill-building activities, to assist residents’ reintegration into society.