Recent comments in /f/askscience

bruce_kwillis t1_j6fftgi wrote

Correct.

OP is asking the wrong question. Based on what day provided it seems in line with an overdose, especially with the other drugs involved, unless the person was a known addict.

From a tox report you only have a snapshot at the one particular time point. You need multiple time points to even potentially guess the starting dose along with an extensive patient history.

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supagirl277 t1_j6fe74n wrote

They do this to make sure the serum is the right level in people who take medications that can change levels based on how long you take it. You need a base number to go off of, so there’s no way to tell exactly how much someone took, but if you’ve tested every month, you’ll know how much that amount will look like in their blood over time. You can tell if someone has overdosed when there’s an amount far greater than a normal dose has entered the system, since it is not longer in the safe therapeutic range and has likely done some damage

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ic3man211 t1_j6ey0ua wrote

Op is describing a case where someone has committed a crime and the police are determining if the amount of drug in their system at the time is abnormally high and would have caused some issues…not like the offender would volunteer they took too much of their painkiller and drove into oncoming traffic

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