Grapefruit juice can block the action of CYP3A4, so instead of being metabolized, more of the drug enters the blood and stays in the body longer. The result: too much drug in your body. The answer as to whether or not someone can potentiate opioids is YES.
However, doing so is extremely dangerous. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA, reports that drug potentiation, which is often combining opioids with other substances, particularly other substances that affect the respiratory system such as alcohol or benzodiazepines increases the chances of a fatal accidental overdose.
Combining opioids and benzodiazepines can be unsafe because both types of drugs sedate users and suppress breathing—the cause of overdose fatality. In , 23 percent of people who died of an opioid overdose also tested positive for benzodiazepines. Evoke Florida has been providing specialized treatment programs for opioid addicts who potentiate their opiate drugs.
Our treatment programs for opioids and their potentiators address multi-substance addiction in its entirety. Since addiction is a treatable condition, our clients get treatment for all of their drug use, which includes potentiators.
This is critical considering that many opiate addicts will remain clean from heroin or other opiates but switch to abusing a potentiator, such as alcohol or benzodiazepines, or over the counter medications. The steps we take to help our clients come to terms with all of their addictions, not just their drug of choice or primary addiction to an opiate, begins with our medically supervised detox. Our detox programs are overseen by medical practitioners who specialize in addiction.
They utilize their training and education to recognize when the presence of other drug withdrawal symptoms occur, which indicate addition or use. Additionally, every client has full panel blood work and physical examinations, which also help reveal what types of drugs are in their system. Our opioid detox prescribes safe medications that eliminate opioid withdrawal symptoms. Each client is allowed to rest and recover during their detoxification.
Our detox center offers care for opiate addiction with potentiated drug use. Patients aged 45 years and older are at increased risk of grapefruit-drug interactions due to their increased consumption of grapefruit and prescription medications.
Elderly patients are most vulnerable because they are less able to compensate for high systemic drug concentrations and because pronounced pharmacokinetic interaction has been found in those 70 years of age and older. Serious adverse events that have been reported due to grapefruit-drug interactions include heart rhythm problems, heart blockage, muscle deterioration, kidney failure, and blood clots.
Some of the most commonly prescribed drugs in —the statins atorvastatin and simvastatin—are identified by the review as having a high atorvastatin or very high simvastatin risk of interaction with grapefruit. Other medications judged by the review authors to be at very high risk of interaction with grapefruit were: the anti-infectives halofantrine and maraviroc; the cardiovascular agent dronedarone; and the CNS agents ketamine oral and lurasidone.
Here is a list of oral medications with the potential to become more potent in interaction with grapefruit that have been approved by the FDA in the last 5 years:. Update : To see a complete list of drugs that interact with grapefruit along with associated adverse events, level of risk, and potential alternative medications, click here. The illicit abuse of prescription opioid analgesics has been on the rise in recent years. However, many prescription opioid analgesics contain a combination of two compounds: an opioid agonist, such as hydrocodone, plus a non-narcotic analgesic, such as acetaminophen.
Although the combination analgesic formulations have been effective in treating pain, it is yet unknown whether the combined formulations possess greater rewarding properties, as compared to the opioid agonist alone, which may lead to greater use and abuse. Acetaminophen is not known to contain rewarding effects;however, it could possibly potentiate the rewarding properties of opioid agonists, such as hydrocodone, when combined. Interestingly, recent findings suggest that the analgesic actions of acetaminophen occur through its active metabolites.
In particular, acetaminophen is metabolized into AM, known to be a transporter blocker of the endocannabinoid anandamide, as well as an agonist for transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 TRPV1 receptors. Therefore, in a series of experiments, we propose to address whether acetaminophen is able to enhance the rewarding properties of hydrocodone using the conditioned place preference paradigm.
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