In 2022, approximately 6,600 emergency cases due to drug use were registered in the national surveillance system. Although there are other calculation methodologies that give a much higher figure as valid, close to 9,400 cases per year. Depending on said methodology, it gives a figure close to 18 to 25 daily cases.
The previous figure is only related to the consumption of illegal, non-medical drugs. It does not include many other data where there is direct or indirect consumption of psychiatric pills and other medical characteristics. In fact, alcohol is usually counted separately, and it is very common in emergencies to see people with alcohol comas or with high doses of alcohol who do not usually enter the statistics.
It is known that more than 50% of substance-related emergencies include alcohol; polyaddiction is a common practice, especially on weekends. Although alcohol alone usually sees more than 12,000 cases in emergencies in Spain in a year.
Cases of care for drug addicts in the emergency room, in relation to other cases, are a small part of the total number of hospital emergencies. However, they tend to be very relevant, since by causing overdoses, poisonings, psychiatric crises, etc., they mean that other very diverse specialties have to intervene, with the high cost that this entails. Furthermore, due to polydrug use, which is very common in this type of patient, there are usually possible general illnesses that are difficult to treat, causing these patients to have a long stay or extensive treatment. Something that does not occur in other types of emergencies.
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The average age of these patients is between 30 and 40 years. At 75% they tend to be mostly men, although the trend is changing. More and more young people appear, including teenagers and especially women. In general, patients are not usually classic drug addicts, but rather habitual users with some complications.
In general, the drugs most involved are usually alcohol, present in most cases, mixed with other substances; cocaine, possibly the illegal drug that brings the most cases to the emergency room throughout the country, and which is associated with symptoms of tachycardia and chest pain; Cannabis or Marijuana attracts especially young people to the emergency room, with anxiety symptoms or psychotic outbreaks; Then there are, although less frequent than before, Heroin and opioids, associated above all with serious states of psychomotor alteration and cognitive diseases; Others, such as ecstasy or amphetamines, are also usually dangerous, but they do not cause as many emergencies as the rest. Although at some times in the recent history of Spain, ecstasy was associated with what was called the Cod Route, which did wreak havoc among a part of the youth of the time.
In general, acute poisonings or overdoses, anxiety or panic attacks, symptoms associated with psychiatric conditions such as psychoses, agitations or visual neuroses, cardiac problems and their symptoms (tachycardia) and trauma and accidents caused by being in a state of alteration, are the most urgent reasons for this type of addict to go to the emergency room in Spain.
Normally, more cases occur on weekends (leisure and free time), at night and in the early morning, especially from Thursday to Friday, although in large cities cases also occur on other days. It is convenient to say, so as not to demonize anyone, that although the typical image is that of a young person partying, older people tend to be chronic consumers; that there are also patients with very deteriorated mental health who, based on antipsychiatric pills, have reached a state of enormous deterioration due to consumption derived from the malpractice of some doctors. And last, but not least, there are cases of consumption of medical drugs, misused by patients or incorrectly prescribed by their doctors.
Normally, between 10% and 20% end up admitted, not only in the emergency room, but in the hospital itself. The vast majority are discharged from the emergency room, after a few hours, if it is observed that their condition improves. The most serious cases, between 2% and 5%, end up in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and of course deaths also occur among all of them.
These patients who die usually have certain clear components: they are polydrug users, they mix alcohol and cocaine in high doses; use highly destructive opioids, such as heroin or fentanyl; In some cases it is also due to being of advanced age, although this does not mean that young people do not have exactly the same disastrous possibility of dying.
In short, Spain is a country where there is high consumption, statistically by population level, but where the focus is not placed on this problem. For some years now, and more commonly, it has been said that Spanish society and others around us consume a huge amount of antipsychotic or anxiolytic pills, whose contraindications are certainly alarming, such as the increase in a high suicide rate. There is no study, and I do not believe it will be done, linking the consumption of certain medications and the increase in suicides in Europe, and especially in Spain. Such a study would perhaps be devastating and no one is interested in carrying it out.
Originally published at LaDamadeElche.com
