Speedball (drug)

Speedball (drug)

'Speedball"

Speedball (alternatively known as powerballing) is a term commonly referring to the hazardous intravenous use of cocaine with heroin or morphine in the same syringe. The speedball can also be taken by insufflation. The original speedball used cocaine hydrochloride mixed with morphine sulfate, as opposed to heroin. The term can also be applied to use of pharmaceutical opioids, benzodiazepines or barbiturates along with amphetamines derivates. This cocktail of drugs can cause a strong physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms. Cocaine acts as a stimulant, whereas heroin/morphine acts as a depressant. Coadministration is meant to provide an intense rush of euphoria with a high that is supposed to combine the effects of both drugs, while hoping to reduce the negative effects, such as anxiety, hypertension, palpitations and other common side effects of stimulants and sedation/drowsiness from the depressant. While this is somewhat effective as one drug (the CNS stimulant) triggers the sympathetic nervous system and the other (the CNS depressant) triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, the two systems that regulate the fight-or-flight & rest-and-digest responses, respectively, and simultaneous activity of the two pathways is what normally keeps one's body in natural homeostasis, there is an imperfect overlap in the effects of stimulants and depressants. Additionally, by suppressing the typical negative side-effects of the two drugs, the user may falsely believe they have a higher tolerance, or that they are less intoxicated than they really are, and thus cause the user to misjudge their intake of one drug or the other or both, often fatally.

Taking stimulants with depressants can still cause other negative side effects typically associated with the abuse of either one individually, such as a state of general confusion, incoherence, blurred vision, stupor, drowsiness, paranoia, and sleep-deprivation-associated psychosis. The combination can also result in uncontrolled and uncoordinated motor skills, with the risk of excessive arousal and death from stroke, heart-attack, aneurysm, or respiratory failure.

Particularly as the effects of cocaine wear off far more quickly than heroin or morphine, fatal respiratory depression can occur when the cocaine wears off and the full effects of heroin or morphine are felt in isolation.