Overdosing... making someone else do it.

Have you seen pulp fiction?
Mr. Big's wife mistakenly snorts a noseful of pure coke. It nearly kills her.
Assuming your character voluntarily snorts coke, have your bad guys give hime a does of the regular stuff, then follow it up with a dose of pure coke. Based on the stuff that's normally on the street, he'll get a dose about 6 to 9 times more potent than he expects. When he's unconscious, if that dose doesn't kill him, they can prepare a hypo and give him a major dose of coke directly into his vein.

I expect the tell tale signs would be bruises from restraining him, and an injection mark.

Also, I expect (but am not sure) that an autopsy could reveal whether or not he was a habitual user. If this were the first time he ever used the drug, I'm sure someone would get suspicious. Perhaps one could find this out by (ew) analysing a used toilet or something. I guess I don't know.

I saw a movie with Kirstie Ally where a man died (naturally) but she was with him and didn't know what to do so she stuffed pills down his throat. But he was already dead, so they just stayed there, and so the people doing the autopsy found them. So I would think the problem with applying cocaine post mordem would be that the body wouldn't absorb it like it would if the person were alive. It would just stay at the point of entry. I would think.

Works for me, Mark. The lack of residue elsewhere in the house might also tip them off. I expect a habitual drug user would have a little bit here, a little bit there, etc.

MarkEsq said:

Thanks all. Just to clarify the facts:

He is not a drug user, and it's the ingestion of drugs that kills him.

I like the idea of making him sniff pure cocaine. I imagine a careless detective would look at the report and say, "Huh, drug overdose" whereas a careful one would say, "Hey, that's too pure! No one sells cocaine that pure on the street!"

Make sense?

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Oh I get it. I thought you meant trying to make it look like an overdose after a person was dead... sorry.

So yeah, pure cocaine sounds plausible.

A person can OD by snorting a large quantity of impure coke or a small quantity of pure coke. The detective would have no way of knowing the quantity or purity, unless there were some left for analysis.

As far as getting a non-user to use it, you could mix a gram of coke into his squeeze bottle of saline nose spary. See this forum for details.

Actually, isn't Vincent Vega a heroin shooter? I thought she mistook the heroin in the baggie in his pocket for coke. And snorting heroin is a whole different deal. (Some people do it, but in much smaller quantities, and I don't recommend it.) Snorting uncut coke can kill you, but do you have any idea how hard it is to get uncut coke? I don't know who the bad guys are, but they'd have to have some serious back country connections.

As for killing your corpse with coke, that's not too hard. Especially if he's thin or older or has a pre-existing heart condition. When I was 16, I had a "coke heart attack" that almost killed me.

RJK said:

Have you seen pulp fiction?
Mr. Big's wife mistakenly snorts a noseful of pure coke. It nearly kills her.

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Redzilla said:

but do you have any idea how hard it is to get uncut coke? I don't know who the bad guys are, but they'd have to have some serious back country connections.

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Eh, depends on luck and location.

When I was younger I happened to know a guy who could get a large quantity of pure coke fairly easily--until he OD'd.

If they bad guys aren't users themselves though, it'd be quite a stretch.

kuwisdelu said:

If they bad guys aren't users themselves though, it'd be quite a stretch.

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They could be dealers. Or have associates who are.

Honestly, even most dealers don't get uncut coke unless they're at the very top of a big distribution chain.

lexxi said:

They could be dealers. Or have associates who are.

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Redzilla said:

Honestly, even most dealers don't get uncut coke unless they're at the very top of a big distribution chain.

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Generally true. I suspect the guy I knew was an exception. Not completely unbelievable, though, especially if you have your characters point out how hard it was to obtain.

A kid from my area died from a heroin overdose. It was supposedly his first time. http://comm.rider.edu/wordpress/2007/10/19/student-dies-after-alleged-heroin-use/

Mr. Big's wife mistakenly snorts a noseful of pure coke. It nearly kills her.

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She snorted heroin. Mr. Vega shot heroin, hence the dazed look when he was driving the car. If it was coke, he'd have been bouncing off the walls.

Redzilla said:

Honestly, even most dealers don't get uncut coke unless they're at the very top of a big distribution chain.

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If they have connections to a half-decent chemistry lab it is not that hard to clean it up

My bad - it was herion that nearly killed her rather than coke.