Street drugs and clozapine

[parenting]

I am the parent of an adult son who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He has finally consented to the clozapine injectionsl. Although I have no proof I suspect he is also taking some street drugs (?) How would some of these interfere with the clozapine treatment. thanks....P.

 

[Mari]

Re: street drugs and clozapine

:wave: Have you checked under the Medication Issues Forum? Has your son started the injections yet / has the doctor done blood work testing for your son? :heart: Mari

 

[parenting]

yes he has started the injections, don't know about bloodwork, I suspect they would know from those tests if he is doing any drug. I'm just so anxious about some form of recovery, I may be wrong about my suspicions since he looks healthy.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Clozapine is a medication that works very well for some patients with schizophrenia - at present, it is the only one that directly treats the negative symptoms of schizophrenia as well as the positive symptoms. However, patients need to be monitored very carefully over the first two years because there are some infrequent but potentially very serious side-effects that can occur.

Taking street drugs along with any psychotropic medication is a dangerous game but this is especially true for clozapine where interactions might be life threatening.

The standard blood tests and other tests that are done to monitor patients taking clozapine will detect problematic symptoms but the tests are rather specific so they won't automatically detect the presence of street drugs. If you are able to contact your son's psychiatrist, it would be worth relaying your concerns about street drugs. If your son is an adult, the psychiatrist cannot give information to you without breaching confidentiality, but it is not a breach of confidentiality to receive information about a patient from a family member.