Side Effects and Tolerance
Side effects increase with dosage and include drowsiness, mild stomach ache, lethargy, urinary retention, bradypnea, constipation, and nausea. Nausea can be attributed to the presence of noscapine and is more common in first-time or inexperienced users. At high doses, the side effects are dangerous and can cause death through respiratory arrest or inhalation of vomit. Constipation often results from use (as with any opiate).
Additionally, frequent use results in high tolerance and dependence. Chemical dependency builds in relation to the frequency of use, dose used, age, gender, weight, and medical condition. Once chemical dependency has developed, abrupt cessation of use will cause withdrawal; symptoms include leg and abdominal cramps, mydriasis, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, insomnia, cravings, lethargy, and anxiety. As users are addicted to all the different alkaloids found in the opium poppy, withdrawal symptoms can be worse and/or more prolonged than those experienced by users of just one opioid. Symptoms of withdrawal usually fade after 4–10 days but cravings and psychological dependence may continue for longer, in some cases up to a year. Treatment methods for addiction are generally the same for any opioid.
Read more about this topic: Poppy Tea
Famous quotes containing the words side, effects and/or tolerance:
“We must be generously willing to leave for a time the narrow boundaries in which our individual lives are passed ... In this fresh, breezy atmosphere ... we will be surprised to find that many of our familiar old conventional truths look very queer indeed in some of the sudden side lights thrown upon them.”
—Bertha Honore Potter Palmer (1849–1918)
“Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“The tradition I cherish is the ideal this country was built upon, the concept of religious pluralism, of a plethora of opinions, of tolerance and not the jihad. Religious war, pooh. The war is between those who trust us to think and those who believe we must merely be led.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)