The average person without pain or addiction will overdose with 60 mg of morphine (18 mg heroin), yet a patient in serious pain will likely require the same dose, 60 mg of morphine (18 mg heroin) to relieve such serious pain symptoms. These addicts showed some signs of serious effects, but continued for several years without fatality and showing average blood levels of 0.3 mg per liter.Īnother study points to the potential lethality of even low doses, with 5 fatalities showing an average of a mere 0.021 mg per liter of blood, representing an approximate intake of 3 mg, i.e. This is equivalent to an intake of approximately 45 mg to 60 mg of heroin, four times daily. One study involved a small group of severe addicts who used high doses ranging from 150 mg to 200 mg of morphine four times daily (75). The blood morphine level of 1.52 mg per liter found in Cobain’s body represents a heroin dose which is substantially higher than this well established maximum lethal dose. the highest dose of intravenous heroin a severe heroin addict can withstand without immediately collapsing into a coma and/or immediately dying, is very well the smallest amount of heroin which will kill. The important thing to note here is that the problems associated with establishing a "lethal dose" for intravenous heroin primarily relates to the problem of establishing a "minimal lethal dose," i.e. (Compare that amount to the 225 mgs or more injected into Kurt Cobain before his death, ed.). Note that in a low tolerance person in an average hospital setting, a small effective therapeutic dose of intravenous heroin is only 3 mg to 4 mg. The most serious heroin addicts will die with virtual certainty with much less than a dose of 75 mg to 80 mg of heroin.Īfter studying many hundreds of such cases, it is clearly established that 75 mg to 80 mg is the maximum lethal dose for even the most severe heroin addicts. Some people get confused and think that high variability in the minimum lethal dose means that a similar variability exists for the maximum lethal dose. Sometimes even a tiny dose can kill, so the lethal dose of intravenous heroin can go as low as 3 mg, possibly even lower. The lethal dose range of intravenous heroin is generally regarded as 10 mg to 12 mg. There is no such thing as a "blood heroin level" because heroin is transformed into morphine when it enters the blood.
No doubt exists that a blood level of 1.52 mg of morphine per liter is over three times the lethal dose, (for a hard-core heroin addict), but the implications of this fact are not well understood. Reach a blood morphine level of 1.52 mg.) (In fact Cobain would have had to inject as much as 225 to 240 mgs of heroin to With subsequent notes that an addict has higher tolerance.Ĭobain would have needed to inject much more than 1.52 mg of heroin to help even the mildest headache. This can be seen in other reports, both biographical and mass media, where theġ.52 mg level is sometimes further described as "per liter of blood" or "triple the lethal dose," usually The figure 1.52 mg actually refers to the level of drugs found in Cobain’s blood, not the amount he originally injected.
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