When a 24-year-old Abbotsford woman went into medical distress after overdosing on ecstasy at a house party this New Year’s Eve, her friends did not call 911 until hours later, when she became unconscious.
No one dialed for help for hours, despite suspecting the young woman took over seven ecstasy pills during the night.
This weekend, a 22-year-old woman in Vancouver died as a result of an overdose of what is believed to be ecstasy.
According to reports, she was experiencing shortness of breath, headache and nausea. Her friends told her to lie down, but when they checked on her hours later, they could not find a pulse.
BC’s chief medical health officer Dr. Perry Kendall says the symptoms of a drug overdose include panic attacks, hallucinations, shortness of breath, palpitation and chest pains. In some cases, victims can become delirious and even comatose.
Despite the seriousness of symptoms, Kendall says they don’t often get people impaired by drugs seek help right away.
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“If you know you have taken an illicit drug, there is a certain disinclination to run to the nearest emergency room in the hopes that maybe there are only transient symptoms and they will pass.”
Constable Ian MacDonald with Abbotsford police says when it comes to recreational drugs, way too many people rely on their equally impaired friends to watch out for them.
“They are all taking it, and they are expecting someone with an altered sense of reality and altered behavior to be the best judge of when a person is going into medical distress.”
MacDonald says although it might be reasonable to have at least one person who is lucid and can look out for the well-being of everyone else, there is a risk involved whether there is somebody watching out for you or not.
“Where it falls down for me is … what if your designated ‘watcher’ can’t do a thing in the world about it? What a position to put somebody in. They were there for the sole purpose of keeping you alive, and they failed. They are going to have to live with that for the rest of their life.”
He says in the case of 17-year-old Cheryl McCormack of Abbotsford who died of ecstasy overdose in December, the young woman was at her friend’s house for sleepover when she took the drug before going to bed.
“Here is the inherent problem,” says MacDonald. “Somebody takes a pill and they appear to be ok at midnight, and then when you check on them in the early morning hours, they did not just go to sleep.”
According to the B.C. Coroner’s office, there were 23 ecstasy associated deaths in our province in 2008, 21 in 2009 and 17 in 2010.
In all cases, ecstasy was found in the system, but may not have been the only cause of death.
Kendall says although there seems to be a bit of a clustering of bad reactions to the drug in B.C. in the last couple of weeks, he does not think it qualifies as a spike.
“It is not unusual. It is tragic.”
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