Posted on 01/31/2006 8:18:44 PM PST by diverteach
I've tried to never use vanity posts before until now and wanted some feedback.
Here it goes.
I woke this morning to the news that an old ex-roommate, sailing buddy, and close friend had died overnight on Monday.
I just found out through his father, jst back from the coroners, that he died violently from a massive stroke.
I'm trying to find out if there would have been any kind of drug use that might have helped cause it.
He was a very active and seemingly healthy and normal 38 y/o. Being a loyal longtime deadhead, still seemed to like the same indulgences, weed, cocaine from time to time, and mushrooms at the big music festivals. That's all that I have any knowledge of.
Needless to say that I'm still numb from this sudden loss and am trying to make more sense of how someone this young could've just up and died overnight of something that usually happens much much later in life.
Thanks in advance, Mark
Sorry about your friend.
I believe cocaine is known to cause massive strokes.
Sorry about your friend, what was his blood pressure?
Cocaine use can cause a number of medical problems -- including cardiovascular (heart and blood vessels) collapse, irregular heartbeats, heart attack, lung damage from smoking, damage to veins, and transmission of blood-borne diseases due to injecting the drug using dirty needles, damage to a fetus, and very high temperature elevations (hyperthermia). Cocaine also causes mood swings, delirium, migraine-type headaches, seizures, transient ischemic attacks (TIA), and strokes.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000743.htm
Cocaine can do that.
Sorry about your loss.
This is strictly a perception, but it seems like more people are getting strokes than in the past. I have to wonder with all the pharmaceuticals that people take, and the potential impacts of mixing them with other drugs, alcohol, tobacco, etc...whether the long-term impacts are not fully understood.
Sorry about your friend. Remember the good times.
Blood thinners.
Len Bias.
According to the DEA, marijuana is not likely to contribute to a stroke, but cocaine and mushrooms might do so. Mushrooms?!? Gads. People have died ingesting poisonous mushrooms thinking that they were the mind-altering variety.
Cocaine, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes. All known contributors. My sympathies.
Cocaine.
Sorry for your friend and his family. By his age he hadn't learned that actions have consequences, I guess. I fervently hope that his friends are able to read the handwriting on the wall.
You don't even need to do drugs to have a killer stroke. My sister had a brain stem aneurism in her early thirties, which kills half the time, and she didn't do drugs. She survived it just fine, which is very unusual, but she just as well could have not. They told us that it was just one of those things.
Cocaine use is very well-associated with stroke. The exact cause is not known, but cocaine use has been hypothesized to cause vasospasm (a spasm of the muscular walls of arteries), vasculitis (inflammation of the arteries), and cause the rupture of pre-existing aneurisms or vascular malformations. Any one of these four may cause either an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke.
Amphetamines and heroin have also been associated with stroke.
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