Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Learn volgabo here. Today's episode touches on drug use and misuse and on opioid overdoses in order to explain how opioids, overdoses and the lock zone work. It isn't graphic, but if you're not up for hearing about all that today, go ahead and skip this one and take care of yourself, okay. Opioids are a category of compounds that can interact with your nervous system and basically chill it out and if you're in pain, make
you feel better temporarily. Your body makes some opioids called endorphins. Over the years, humans have developed a number of drugs that have similar effects. Some are manufactured and prescribed by doctors for pain relief. Others are made and sold illegally, but all of them can pretty easily cause physical and psychological dependence in the people who take them, which can lead to the misuse of these drugs, which can lead to overdoses. You've probably heard about how serious the opioid
epidemic is. If you live in the United States, chances are that someone you personally know has been touched by it. Maybe that someone is you, or maybe you don't even know that you know that someone, because there's a lot of stigma around drug use and misuse. Prior to the COVID nineteen pandemic, we were losing about seventy thousand Americans a year to opioid related deaths, including overdoses, and sadly, the stresses and isolation of the pandemic only made that
number rise. The reasons that this epidemic has gotten this bad are many and complicated and a whole other episode or series of episodes, really, but one of the things we can all do to help curb it is learn what an overdose looks like and how to hopefully save the life of a person experience in one. So one of the effects of all opioids is that they bind to these receptors in your brain stem and slow your
breathing down. This is part of why they're prescribed for pain relief, because in a small amount, that's the thing you might want. It slows your heart rate, lowers your blood pressure, and just overall lowers the stress level in your body while the drug is bound to those receptors. But if you take too much of an opioid, your breathing slows so much that it just stops. That's what
kills people during an opioid overdose. They might look like they've kind of suddenly fallen asleep, but then you notice that they're not breathing. One opioid that is increasingly overwhelmingly responsible for overdoses is called fentanyl. This is a drug that was created by researchers a couple decades ago in
response to an honestly good demand for better anesthetics for surgery. Unfortunately, fentanyl is so powerful and inexpensive to make the people began producing it illegally and mixing it in with other drugs sold illegally, like powders and pressed pills. And it is really easy to overdose when ventinyl is involved because it's really strong. But there is a sort of antidote to opioid overdose. It's a medication called nlock Zone. That's
the generic term for it. It's also often referred to as Narcan, which is a brand name for a version of nalock Zone that's administered via a nasal spray. There's also a brand of auto injectors called zo whatever the type. Nalock Zone works by knocking opioids off of those receptors in your brainstem, and then attaching to those receptors itself, blocking them up so the opioids can't get back on
and your breathing starts returning to normal. It's like if you're at a dance club and some random person is acting rudely and one of your friends comes up and elbows them away and starts dancing with you instead. Nalock zone is totally safe to administer. I saw the former Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome Adams speak about it, and one of the things you would do is use one of those auto injectors on himself on stage to demonstrate
how easy and safe it is. The auto injectors are a little bit easier to use, but a little bit less effective than the nasal spray. It's important to note that as scary as fentanyl is, it is safe to touch. There's this myth that rescuers who were handling an overdosing person or their drugs enough to administer n lock zone have then themselves overdosed from that brief skin contact, but
it's not true. Fentanyl doesn't really absorb through your skin, so you don't have to worry that you're putting yourself in danger by helping someone else. And depending on how much of an opioid is in someone's system and how much nalock zone is administered during a single dose, it
can take multiple doses to get someone breathing again. You should always call emergency dical care if someone is overdosing, even if you do administer in a lock zone, because they may stop breathing again and will need to be monitored for that and for acute withdrawal symptoms. You can't buy in a lock zone off the shelf. It's not like hyboprofin, for example, but you don't need a prescription
for it. Either. You can go into pretty much any pharmacy and ask to buy it, or you can get in touch with one of the organizations in your community that works in harm reduction, prevention and recovery. Many programs offer both a lock zone and training about it for free. If you're assembling a first aid kit, especially for use in a public space, or if you or people you know use illegally obtained drugs, you should get in a
lock zone and learn how to use it. Because people add ventanyl to all kinds of powders and pressed pills, even ones that look legitimate. You can also buy test trips online to test your drugs for ventanyl. The reasons that people have for using bioids and other drugs are just as complicated as as epidemic as a whole, but being prepared to save a life is pretty simple, and now you know the basic science of how it works.
Today's episode was written by me and produced by Tyler clag brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot com. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.