Misdiagnosis of Drug Abuse

Abstract

<h3>To the Editor:—</h3> The growing incidence of drug abuse and misuse by adolescents has raised this problem to the status of a disease, epidemic in proportions, and susceptible of misdiagnosis. Many complications are serious, and some are life threatening. Often great acumen is needed to delineate clearly the syndrome of drug intoxication. The differential diagnosis of toxic psychosis due to drug ingestion is particularly complex. Recently, the Physician's Poison Consultation Service at the University of Colorado Medical Center has been confronted by several instances of misdiagnosis of drug psychosis. These errors were traced to a failure on the part of the examining physicians to separate long hair and odd clothing from odd behavior, as a symptom of disease. Most recently, a young man was admitted to Colorado General Hospital after being transferred from another hospital with a diagnosis of probable psychosis due to drug ingestion. The physicians who had examined