I had a friend in high school whose mother was a prescription drug addict and died from an accidental overdose. As far as I can tell, she was just used to taking a lot of stuff, but that day took the wrong amounts of the wrong combination. That's what this sounds like to me.
This combination thing is a big component in deciding that something was accidental. It's possible that the doses of individual drugs in his blood were all in the range of heavy recreational use, but that the combination was lethal. In that case they would normally conclude accidental.
For instance, diazepam and alprazolam are usually thought to be very safe drugs in terms of overdose, because their dose-response curve is so shallow. The general view is that it would be hard to get enough down, and keep it down, long enough to die from them. For most people, the more you take, the longer you sleep.
But that nice, slow, dose-response makes an long-lasting base on which other drug effects can build. If you put faster acting CNS depressants on top of if, they will spike higher than expected. If you took too much diazepam and alpraxolam a few hours ago, and discount it because, hey, it was hours ago, and then take a fast acting narcotic, it's easy to overdose.
So forensic pharmacologists have these classic patterns that they consider to be indicative of accidental overdose.
I'll let you know what he thinks. Or should I have him e-mail you himself, one Waits fan to another?
Either way. He's definitely somebody I'd like to get to know.
raq - insent. not the normal fare.
Aha! A googlebating session turns up that somebody is recommending my book.
I love Cleveland.
Hey, David, I just told my minion she should definitely buy your book, after she said in passing that her boyfriend is a huge Waits fan. I was like, "Do I have the book for you!"
ION, my boss is literally trying to kill me. I heard her assistant tell her what time the meeting was. Because they were yelling across half the office, so I yelled across the other half to confirm the time. Which was then passed along to my boss. And yet? NO fucking idea when the meeting was. Seriously, WTF.
Jesse, why all the yelling? Don't these people have phones? or email?
Hey, David, I just told my minion she should definitely buy your book, after she said in passing that her boyfriend is a huge Waits fan. I was like, "Do I have the book for you!"
Oooh, nicely pimped. You can point out that it's cheap too.
Thankee, cowgirl. I'm going to have to go on record saying that nobody should be killing you.
Wee! I just e-mailed my boss with a request to go home a few hours early due to the weather (we have white-out conditions right now, and since I didn't get in until 9:45, I would have to stay until almost 6:00 for the full 8-hour day). She said that I could do whatever I had to re: the weather, so I'm going to take off around 3:30. Maybe I can beat whatever traffic is on the road by then and get home sometime before 4:00, instead of the 80 minutes it took me last Thursday night during the last evening snowstorm.
I'm more thrilled. I haven't gotten any feedback on the book (except from people who read it in manuscript).
I gave a copy to a friend's husband a couple weeks ago, because he's a Waits fan. I know he was excited about reading it, so I will nag for feedback.
Oh, and he wrote a book about Asian Cinema which I told him I'd pimp. So now I have. Yay!
