2023-08-18 15:15:05
Alcohol is “a constant”. Followed by the classic cocaine and amphetamines. Then so many ‘drugs x’, “relatively new substances” that the tests that are done in the hospital can’t even keep up with. They are the ingredients of the summer night high for ever younger kids. Livio Colombo, from the San Paolo hospital, took a photograph from the observatory of an emergency room in Milan at time.news Salute. Even 15-16 year olds arrive in serious conditions in the emergency rooms, prey to nightlife excesses. “I don’t perceive any particular differences this summer compared to other years”, in terms of SOS for substance abuse, the doctor said.
“As in all Ps we have a progressive increase in cases of substances that we can define as ‘new’: synthetic cannabinoids such as Spice and many others, pills and the whole series of derivatives of amphetamines which have already been on the market for some time and are very popular in rave parties and moments of aggregation like this”, says the head of the emergency room of the San Paolo. “Sometimes they tell us the names” of the drugs taken “and honestly we have never heard them, we need to go and find information”, reports the expert. “In general there is a tendency for the frequency of these cases to increase on weekends, although in the summer period every day becomes quite similar, since there is no school” or routine daily activities.
In the high menu there is a fixed item: “It is alcohol – confirms Colombo – a constant in the causes of arrival in the emergency room. And here too there is a progressive reduction in age that has been emerging for a while of time. We see 15-16 year olds who arrive full of alcohol, they vomit, they are in conditions of reduced consciousness. It is not pleasant. There are also adults of course, it is not that minors arrive here every day, but also with colleagues of Pediatrics we have witnessed and are witnessing a slightly earlier use of alcohol at a recreational level, alcohol which is clearly much less tolerated in younger children”.
As for the new drugs, “they are also substances that have been around perhaps for a few years, but they are the ones that are difficult to recognize with the usual tests. Precisely for this reason there are standard laboratory tests that we have tried to implement because they were no longer in step with the times. For two years now we have had a more up-to-date ‘package’, but even this is not enough – admits Colombo -. So we are in contact with the Poison Control Center of Pavia which is a national point of reference for the research of new substances and we collaborate with them on the most delicate and most difficult cases in terms of diagnosis. We send them the samples while we manage the patient”.
Therefore, summarizes the expert, “there is certainly a reduction in the average age in the use of recreational substances, in addition to alcohol which, unfortunately, is also increasing in the very young population. And then there is the range of new substances. We before Covid, until 2019, we systematically held meetings in schools to raise awareness of both alcohol and substances. In these situations, I learned the names of a large number of substances from the kids themselves. Sometimes maybe they don’t use them personally, but they know that they go around and ask very precise questions.It is therefore important to make known what these substances can do both to the organism of those who take them, and as a possible source of road accidents, or even violence against girls In short, it is necessary to give alerts and make the kids as aware of the risks as possible”.
Among the substances intercepted by emergency room experts there are also a series of drugs for “chronic therapies which are taken, for example, by psychiatric patients in abuse mode, and in the same way we sometimes also detect situations of abuse of analgesics (such as opioids, ed), which pushes a lot unfortunately – highlights Colombo – Of course, here it is a much less widespread phenomenon than in the United States, where there have been many situations of damage and overdoses, and where Fentanyl is also a big problem. But given that the United States has always led the way from this point of view, we must be ready to intercept even higher numbers in the coming years, an excess of these abuses”.
Among other things, concludes the specialist, “we are used to the toxicity of heroin for which there is an antidote given to the patient” in an overdose, “assuming he is found alive”. But, “with these more recent derivatives, such as Fentanyl, the problem instead is that there is a need for a much, much higher quantity of antidote, because it is a much more concentrated drug and the quantity of antidote that was used to counteract heroin is no longer enough. In short, the clinic changes, the molecules change and the treatments that must be done change. And the risk of drug addiction is always present. We are not so far from Rogoredo” and from the ‘drug forest’. “Lately there have been more checks, but honestly the amount of substances in there remains high and the same can be said of the number of young people who go there to take substances”.
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