I had a friend die of a drug overdose recently . Her son called me about the list of meds the coroner found in her system . Oxycontin , Cytalopram , Percocet , Methadone and Neuroxycontin . Can anybody tell me what Neuroxycontin is and how it is different than regular Oxycontin ? She was a dear friend who dealt with chronic pain and lost that battle in a very sad way . None of the pills she took were prescribed to her and I am asking this to help a kid who lost his mother to understand what happened .    maxx

12 years in health care and Neuroxycontin is a new one on me.  I did a search in Epocrates and came up with zilch.  I'm not sure if you've spelled it incorrectly or what?

eta: in your list of drugs found percocet and oxycontin are the same drug.  I'm not sure how or why they could come up as separate drugs on a drug screen.

Remove the Neuroxycontin and that's the same mixture that my cousin took and never woke up from.

Don't percs have some sort of 'lesser' pain reliever (Ibuprofen) in them?



Would that show up?





 

The most reliable way to get that information is to find an independent pharmacy and ask for help.  The big chains usually push their pharmacists to the limit so they might just give her the basic info to get her away from the consulting window.  Most pharmacists working at independent pharmacies tend to care more (one of the reasons they take the lower pay) and she should be able to find one who could explain it to her easily.  A pharmacist she gets prescriptions from regularly would be the best bet to minimize the chance of her raising a red flag and the pharmacist thinking she's trying to find a score.

You need to check in a pharmacopeidia (sp)!

Citalopram is an SSRI depression med.
Everything else is an opiate or opiate like drug.


Neurontin (Gabapentin) might be the other stuff.
Prescribed for epilepsy and more commonly, neuropathic pain.

Did he get an actual copy of the report or just that description?

If you have the complete spectra, assuming they did GC-MS, I can help.

Absolutely.

And it matters a great deal what both were derivatized with, if at all.

If they looked for it.

 

Yes (acetaminophen) and it can cause liver failure in high doses.

The drug screening we do in the hospital screen for controlled substances like narcotics, benzodiazepines, methamphetamines, lsd based drugs, MDMA, alcohol, etc.  They do not test for acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or non-narcotic drugs.  Can I say 100% that the test performed on your friend did or didn't test for those compounds.....not with any certainty.  It just seemed curious to me that a tox screen would be able to differentiate between percocet (oxy/acetaminophen) and straight oxycontin.

If your friend was taking all the drugs you listed I would guess it's unlikely that he/she suffered the hepatotoxic effects from acetaminophen that are mentioned above.  It's more likely that the respiratory depression caused by stacking several heavy-hitter narcotics was the ultimate undoing.  Fulminant liver failure from toxic levels of acetaminophen would be a slower and much more painful death.  

All just speculation on my part based on what I've seen.

What he said.  Are you sure the Nuro Oxycotion was not Neurotin?  

Your friend was on some heavy Duty Pain Meds.

It's probably referring to noroxycodone, which is a metabolite of oxycodone. Your body quickly turns oxycodone into noroxycodone via the liver. The toxicology report includes this as well.

Heroin has a similar metabolite called 6-acetylmorphine.

This is extremely basic, but I can really bore you with more specifics if you want. (I'm actually a registered (not street) pharmacist)