An experiment showed that the combination of stimulants and opioids, especially cocaine and heroin, could result in increased risk. It’s not enough to understand what a speedball is, you also need to have an understanding of why they are so dangerous. If the depressant is metabolized before the stimulant, you take the risk of having a heart attack.
Speedball Drug – How Does It Affect The Body?
Since cocaine is a stimulant drug, the body works quickly to take in and use more oxygen to counter the extra energy. At the same time, heroin causes breathing to slow down – putting a strain on the overactive lungs, heart, and brain. The speedball causes confusion as the body tries to receive enough oxygen to balance out the effects of cocaine – a tough task when heroin actively works to slow down breathing. Heroin works by binding to opioid receptors1 in the brain, producing dopamine, which causes its euphoric effects.
The ‘Speedball’: Risks of Mixing Heroin and Cocaine
If you’re doing speedballs or are with someone who is, it’s important that you know how to spot the signs when emergency help is needed. A 2019 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlights several cases of unintentional fentanyl overdoses by people who thought they were just snorting coke. Plus, since the effects of each substance might be muted when you speedball, you might not feel like you’re that high. Jessica Plonchak serves as Executive Clinical Director at ChoicePoint. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Social Work.
What are the Risks of Mixing These Drugs?
The use of cocaine can lead to serious side effects or death from respiratory failure, stroke or heart attack. Combining drugs can also increase the risk of overdose, as the drug user may develop a tolerance to one drug and use more to achieve the desired effect. Speedballing can also lead to addiction, mental health issues, and social problems, such as job loss, financial problems, and legal issues. Speedballing is a dangerous practice involving the simultaneous use of a stimulant drug (like cocaine or methamphetamine) and a depressant drug (like heroin or prescription opioids). Respiratory failure or depression is particularly likely with speedballs.
Respiratory System
East Coast Recovery doesn’t believe in just providing medication or keeping clients overnight so they don’t relapse. There are also long-term side effects of speedballing on the major organs of the body, including https://sober-home.org/alcohol-use-abuse-and-depression-is-there-a/ the lungs, heart, and liver. There are reports of individuals who experience manic episodes, paranoia, or depression after speedballing as well. Doing so can lead to significant physical and mental health issues.
The Importance of Good Nutrition in Addiction Recovery
- Heroin use leads to euphoric or pleasurable feelings in the body and mind.
- Speedballs combine heroin, a depressant, with cocaine, a stimulant.
- Cocaine use can lead to heart irregularities and heart attacks after you use the drug.
- Speedballing can be very dangerous, as it increases the risk of adverse effects and overdose and can cause permanent damage to organs, such as the heart, lungs, and brain.
When someone takes heroin and cocaine together, the potency is much higher and there is an increased risk of overdose. Following periods of speedball abuse, detoxing can be uncomfortable and even fatal if done without medical care. Contact a treatment provider today to learn about rehab-related options.
This becomes very dangerous to the user, which could then also result in their own eventual deaths. Speedballing is especially risky because it forces the body to process more types of drugs simultaneously. Taking a depressant and a stimulant together causes a “push-pull” reaction in the body that can be very dangerous.
Giving your brain drugs that have contrasting effects can cause serious damage physically and even psychologically. There is a Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) approved for opioid addiction. However, there are currently no medications to treat stimulant addiction; for issues like polysubstance abuse, a comprehensive and personalized treatment is required. Speedballing can be a dangerous practice, and it’s a significant sign that someone’s substance abuse problems are increasingly worst. At Lighthouse Recovery Institute, our addiction treatment plans offer a comprehensive approach that incorporates evidence-based treatments, therapies, support groups, and more. Contact us to learn more about how you can get help for you or someone you love today.
A speedball originally involved morphine sulfate and cocaine hydrochloride. Modern speedballs involve heroin and cocaine, but they can also involve several other substances like barbiturates, benzodiazepines, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and other opioids. Generally speaking, a speedball involves the use of a drug with depressant qualities that is mixed with a stimulant. Speedballs are notorious for their involvement in several high-profile overdose deaths. Speedballs and similar drug mixes have been linked to several celebrity overdoses, including John Belushi, Chris Farley, River Phoenix, and Phillip Seymore Hoffman.
However, professional help using any evidence-based approach has a high chance of success. Cocaine use can cause renal vasoconstriction, leading to ischemic and acute kidney injury. Heroin use can cause hepatic injury, liver damage, cirrhosis, and other complications. Combining these drugs can further exacerbate these effects, leading to severe and potentially irreversible damage to these vital organs. This combination of effects can cause a rush or high, followed by sedation, and can lead to various complications, such as arrhythmias, seizures, stroke, coma, or death. Outpatient addiction treatment offers many of the same beneficial programs and activities but does not require the patient to stay overnight.
Additionally, the depressant properties of heroin can slow your heart rate and breathing to a dangerous level. Cocaine can also increase your blood pressure and heart rate to potentially deadly levels. One of the biggest dangers of speedball drugs is that cocaine wears off much faster than heroin. Heroin is such a dangerous drug that its overdose results in opioid overdose and respiratory failure.
There are no official statistics about speedballing specifically, as it is often classified as a type of polydrug use. Speedballing is injecting or ingesting a combination of a stimulant and a depressant drug. For informational purposes only, a link to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments web page is provided here. If given in time, naloxone can reverse an opioid overdose.[12-14] There is no serious harm in giving naloxone if it isn’t needed.
Cocaine’s common effects include euphoria, energy and alertness. For some people, cocaine use can cause increased paranoia and hostility. When someone uses heroin, which is derived from poppy plant resin, the drug binds to the person’s opioid receptors, which creates a euphoric high and also a sense of deep relaxation.
This means you have to take increasing amounts of the drugs to elicit similar effects over time. Where the average person gets prescribed potent drugs from a doctor, who is obviously medically literate, people who choose to abuse drugs often don’t. Always get information from quality sources about the drugs you intend to take.
Others may be looking to enhance the effects of one drug with the other. If you are abusing stimulants and opioids at the same time, you are likely to develop an addiction to the combination. If you are worried that you or a loved one suffers from a speedball addiction, knowing the signs can help you determine whether it’s time for professional treatment. Mixing heroin (an opioid depressant) and cocaine (a stimulant) is commonly known as a speedball. There’s a misconception that taking these two drugs together can balance out their opposing effects.
The potent effects of speedballs can quickly lead to addiction, as the intense euphoria and stimulation produced by this mixture can create a powerful psychological and physical dependence. Using a crack in speedballing can cause a surge in blood pressure, https://sober-home.org/ heart rate, and cardiac output. This can lead to cardiovascular complications, including heart attack, arrhythmias, and stroke. Cocaine use can also cause narrowing of blood vessels and increase the risk of aortic ruptures, leading to sudden death.