500mg of codeine?????????

[mandmgreen18]

i take opiates a lot and ive never had any kind of bad reaction. but the other night i took the highest dose of codeine ive ever takin, i wasnt trying to kill myself,
i broke out into hives and my whole upper body was dark red, my face almost turned purple, and i had a horrible itch.
this is the first time ive ever had a reaction to codeine like that is it cuz i took it in a really high dose. will this ever happen again if i take it again [in a much lower dose] whats a lethal dose for the average person, did i come close. i have a really high tolerence. i didnt hardly feel anything that night.

[Caycie101]

You might be allergic....contact your doctor ASAP

[Q&A K]

IIRC the fatal dosage of codeine in 50% of people is 800mg.

remeber, codeine is a prodrug for morphine, it needs to be made into morphine by liver, at about 1:10 ratio.

but, the thing is, your liver can only handle about 400mg of codeine per 8 hours. Taking anymore then that is just fruitless, dangerous and liable to give you more side effects without any gain in pain relife or euphoria.

edit: kassie18, is as usual, wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeine#United_States it is schedual II when in a single product, on in dosage units of 90mg or more. and its counted as an opiate.

[Kassie18]

Well codeine is not actually an opiate. your body metabolizes it into one but its not considered one, and it is not even a schedule II drug like most pain pills like oxys, and percocet, it is considered a schedule III. You obviously took too much, and you could even be allergic to something in it. You need to talk to whoever prescribed it to you, if you are legally taking it. If not I dont know what to tell you. The lethal dose is different for everyone. Even if you have a tolerance it doesnt matter anyone can take too much one day and die. Thats why you really need to be careful when messing around with drugs like that

[ladypam]

According to Goth's Medical Pharmacology,

"Codeine is 3-methylmorphine, a semisynthetic alkaloid prepared from morphine. Morphine is obtained from opium. Both are important analgesics. Codeine is used for moderate pain."

With reference to your question, how much codeine did you take? If you have been taking opiates before, what kind of opiates do you take? Is this the first time you took codeine?

Tolerance to codeine is much slower as compared to tolerance to morphine. For non tolerant users, a dosage of 200 mg can be fatal. But to those who have been taking opiates for a long time, even a dosage of 8 grams is not enough, especially with severe pain. The more you take opiates, the more your tolerance for it increases. This doesn't mean that you continue taking opiates just for the fun of it.

Symptoms of an overdose include comatose, cyanosis, slow or absent respiration. Your symptoms indicate more of an allergic reaction, probably something with the codeine preparation or something you ate or took during that time since if it were an overdose, then you wouldn't have time nor the strength to write this post online.

In any case, I suggest you go to your doctor to check on this reaction of yours. Taking codeine again may trigger the same response, if this is the one responsible for it.

Hope this helps.