A ten-year outpatient emergency study found benzodiazepines commonly involved in adolescent recreational poisoning. It counted presentations and could not identify repeated visits by the same patient.
The study reviewed 1,209 recreational-drug poisonings in patients aged twenty or younger during 2014–2023. Benzodiazepines were reported in 22.2%, and more than one drug in about a third. Cannabis, heroin, cocaine, and other drugs also featured.
Sole-ethanol cases were included only from 2018, making their observation window different. Recreational-drug poisoning incidence rose markedly in 2023 after earlier fluctuations.
Some of the most severe cases went directly to hospital, and some patients declined transport after ambulance care. The clinic therefore did not capture every poisoning episode in Oslo.
Patient identities were not registered for this analysis, preventing estimation of how many individuals had repeated presentations. Clinical case records also do not necessarily provide the same certainty as a comprehensive analytical confirmation.
Keep drug involvement, unique patients, and population incidence separate. The benzodiazepine percentage is not a prevalence of use among all adolescents, nor proof that benzodiazepines alone produced each illness. It describes their role within a selected emergency-care workload and a specified historical period.
Original analysis of the supplied journal article, identified as PMC12522697.