Officials warn, teens misuse medications

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Parents may want to keep a close watch on their medicine as well as their liquor.

Teens may be hitting cold and cough medicine to get high.

The defendant in a recent court case testified he would often take up to 30 tablets of the cough medicine Coricidin to hallucinate.

Joshua Lee Adams, 20, was allegedly high on that when the car he was driving hit and killed Gerald Durant Grooms, who was driving a motorcycle on April 14, 2003, off Farm-to-Market Road 1541 and Plantation Road.

A jury found Adams guilty of intoxication manslaughter and sentenced him to seven years in prison and a $7,000 fine earlier this week.

Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren said he was surprised area teens were abusing these common over-the-counter meds.

"If I didn't know it, how many parents don't know it?" he said.

These cough medicines have DXM, dextromethorphan, as a primary active ingredient. DXM acts as a psychedelic similar to LCD and PCP.

But some of these cough medicines, including Coricidin, mix DXM with an anticholinergic, chlorpheniramine maleate, that interacts with DXM in a harmful manner, causing problems with liver enzymes.

Some medicines contain acetaminophen, an overdose of which can cause liver damage or death, or guaifenesin, which may cause vomiting.

Farren said these drugs affect motor skills, resulting in slurred speech, difficulty walking, impairments in vision and rational thinking.

"If I didn't know it, how many parents don't know it?"

Some side effects include panic attacks, high blood pressure, high body temperatures, psychotic breaks, depression and respiratory depression.

Since the drug is legal, it's difficult to track overdoses, but people have died from using the drug.

During Adams' trial, a former friend, Abbey O'Brien, now 19, testified both she and Adams ended up in the hospital after an overdose of Coricidin.

O'Brien spent three days in a coma and 22 hours on a ventilator, she said.

Nearly half of the people the two often did Coricidin with were also hospitalized. But most, including O'Brien and Adams, kept taking it.

"Bad decisions," she said.

The two testified they took Coricidin in large doses to "trip," or hallucinate. They said the drug impaired their motor skills and caused them to feel intoxicated.

Triste Tach, director of program services at the Amarillo Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, said she's not seen an abundance of people using these medicines, but suspects some of those addicted to alcohol or other drugs may have started on cough medicine when they were younger.

"It could be a starting point," she said.

Tach said parents should keep in touch with their kids, look out for symptoms like dizziness, nausea, disorientation, sweating or vision impairments.

And parents should watch their medicine cabinets.

"Keep a close eye on it and check the levels on your bottles," she said.

LINK:http://amarillo.com/stories/111804/new_620330.shtml

[Ubiquitous]

psychedelic similar to LCD and PCP.

Mmmm yes. I do enjoy a good dose of my laptop's LCD screen once and a while...

*sigh*

Another CCC overdose.

[nazrhyn]

Dammit Llama, that was my witty response .

[Eloivore]

Um ... wait. He ran someone down while he was on CCC, *after* he'd already been hospitalized?

If Darwin hadn't been asleep on the job that day, the guy on the motorcycle wouldn't be the one dead.

[MrKlorox]

"If I didn't know it, how many parents don't know it?" he said.

Hm... that sounds awfully similar to this next quote:

"If I didn't know it, how many parents don't know it?"

Wow Amarillo... I'm proud to call you home. This is also the place where that preppy jock ran over and killed that punky kid, Brian Deneke, just cause he was a punk. YAY FOR HAET CRIEMS!!@

[Ubiquitous]

There was another suicide with a kid that went to a highschool thats local to me. I actually go to the school, only at night insted of during the day.

Supposidly he was on some shrooms and he called his girlfriend and she didnt wanna talk to him when he was tripping so he hung himself. His brother got like charged with manslaughter for selling them to him.

Its like the 4th suicide in the past 2 months.

Yup, im pretty sure that the main of our society is devolving.

[ZenRaver]

Originally posted by LlamaOfDeath@Jan 6 2005, 01:57 PM
Supposidly he was on some shrooms and he called his girlfriend and she didnt wanna talk to him when he was tripping so he hung himself. His brother got like charged with manslaughter for selling them to him.

Now that pisses me off.


So if someone walks into a liquor store, buys a bottle of vodka, then proceeds to get piss drunk and hang himself, you can charge the liquor store clerk with manslaughter?

[Ubiquitous]

Well, the liquor store owner isnt doing anything illegal. If he saw the man walk in with a bottle of antidepressants, rope around his neck, saying hes going to kill himself and still sold him a bottle of liquor, possibly get charged with manslaughter?