Drug mules & cocaine overdose treatment?

I COULD TOTALLY ANSWER THIS!! ...my mum works in the E.R and always comes home with stories of drugs mules, but I can't remember...and she at work

I promise I'll give me two cents tomorrow.

I think they'd use a drug called 'Narcan' ('naloxone hydrochloride') to counteract the effects of the cocaine. And I'm pretty sure they'd use x-rays to locate the drug-filled condom.

(8 hours later...)
Never mind - forget I said anything. Even though I said 'cocaine', I was thinking 'heroin'. Duh...

From watching episodes of "Border Security", the customs officers have a pretty good idea of what to watch out for when questioning a suspect. Your character would most likely exhibit some behaviours while waiting to go through the gate which would make her suspicious. Either that, or the dog would sit next to her (I don't know if US dogs are different - In Australia they're trained to sit next to a suspect).

From there, they would start to run more tests, search her bags and/or her person, and by then she would be feeling rather ill, and that would be the dead giveaway. The feds would then escort her off to hospital.

She'd be x-rayed to determine the amount of condoms she'd swallowed, and where - then surgery would be called for to remove them. I'm not sure how the broken one would be dealt with prior to surgery.

Narcan is an anti-opiate. Cocaine is not an opiate. In the ER they'd go ahead an give narcan because it's generally a safe thing to give and there's no guarantee that all of the condoms have only cocaine. The point is that Narcan is not a panacea for all forms of drug overdose.

Your MC would be playing Russian Roulette by being a "mule" and then would be playing it with 2 chambers loaded by deliberately poking holes in the containers. As she got OD'd she'd get more and more agitated, have pressured speech, become very sweaty and very possibly become violent before passing out from an arrhythmia (or worse, like a stroke or heart attack).

Rather than surgery necessarily, they might (depending upon how stable she was, the number and location of the packages and if they thought they could trust her word for what's in them) they might just put a nasogastric tube down her throat and inject a buch of activated charcoal, keep her monitored, give her clear liquids and laxatives and let them pass.

Why poke holes in the balloons when she could get the same result by taking something else to make her sick, like Ipecac?

Puking up condoms full of drugs. Nice visual. Thanks Ted.

chevbrock said:

From watching episodes of "Border Security", the customs officers have a pretty good idea of what to watch out for when questioning a suspect. Your character would most likely exhibit some behaviours while waiting to go through the gate which would make her suspicious. Either that, or the dog would sit next to her (I don't know if US dogs are different - In Australia they're trained to sit next to a suspect).

From there, they would start to run more tests, search her bags and/or her person, and by then she would be feeling rather ill, and that would be the dead giveaway. The feds would then escort her off to hospital.

She'd be x-rayed to determine the amount of condoms she'd swallowed, and where - then surgery would be called for to remove them. I'm not sure how the broken one would be dealt with prior to surgery.

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From what my mum told me, chevbrock is spot on.
The suspect would usually feel ill, and sweat (the sweating could also be nerves)
If the condoms are still in your stomach they would pump your stomach.
If a condom broke or spilt - it depends on the amount of cocaine in the condom, but the effects of the drug could be fatal resulting in death - maybe you should research the effects of swallowing cocaine.

RJK said:

Puking up condoms full of drugs. Nice visual. Thanks Ted.

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Would you prefer the visual of how they intend to get rid of the condoms full of drugs?

bylinebree said:

chevbrock, a dog would sit beside her if the cocaine was INSIDE of her? Wow.

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I don't think the dog would be able to smell the cocaine inside her (but then again, my dog knew I was pregnant before I did, so maybe it could!) but most certainly there would still be traces of it on the outside of the condoms, which she would have on her fingers, and then transfer onto her suitcase and clothes.

bylinebree said:

Ok, my female MC was once a drug mule who carried cocaine in condoms she swallowed. She got desperate to get out of this, and poked pin-holes in one so it would leak, and one of two things would happen:

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Wow, this is both scary and desperate.

I really don't know if this interests you at all, but I was watching a documentary on cocaine smugglers in Columbia this morning and remembered this thread. There wasn't any information about ODing, but there were neat little tid bits about the smuggling process.

The cocaine bricks are cut into pieces about 5-6 grams each and each pieces is stuffed inside a cut off finger from a latex glove. A simplistic suction machine thingey sucked the air out and sealed the latex shut. Then the smugglers dipped it in wax and let it dry so the stomach acids wouldn't eat through the latex.

The smuggler said that mules are expected to carry at least 1 kg of cocaine each, which means swallowing 20 or more "pills" (that's what he called them). The camera man (who was posing as a wannabe smuggler and had a camera hidden on his shirt) asked him how he could swallow those things (they are about the size of an average thumb) and the smuggler said he needs to relax his throat and drink lots of liquid. He usually swallows about 140 pills and it would take him about 4 hours.

He also said that mules are told to make sure they're seen eating on long flights so they won't arouse suspicion. Due to the wax covering, the digestive enzymes won't harm the cocaine covering and will keep the smuggler protected. Also, he said that dogs can't smell the cocaine at all.

I don't know anything about cocaine OD treatment, but I thought this info may be relevant to you.

Good luck with your story!