Synthetic Heroin Is Too Powerful for the Overdose Antidote
- Multiple doses needed to bring someone back from the brink
- An increasing drain on health-care resources across the U.S.
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Ralph Battels figured it out when one of his patients woke up and tried to punch him in the face. A single shot of naloxone often really isn’t enough to do the trick anymore.
Addicts in the Colorado town where he’s an emergency room doctor are downing such incredibly powerful opioids that the overdose-reversal agent may have to be applied two or three times -- or more -- to revive them and calm their sometimes violent highs. The budget at Pagosa Springs Medical Center is taking an unanticipated hit, another victim of a raging national epidemic.