Poisonings from recreational drug and alcohol use account for 9 percent of all poisoning-related hospital admissions,while males and people under 30 are at greatest risk, according to a paper in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

The lesson: Young people are more inclined to be both experimental and stupid about it, especially at Australian music festivals. The report is based on 13,805 patient records collected between January 1996 and December 2013 using data from the Hunter Area Toxicology Service (HATS). The report finds that stimulants were the drug class most commonly linked to recreational poisonings, followed by alcohol, opioids, sedatives, hallucinogens, cannabis, non-narcotic analgesics, ecstasy and cocaine. 
The most common co-ingested substance was alcohol, comprising almost half of all recreational poisonings. Six (0.5 percent) patients died as a result of their recreational poisoning. All of these patients had taken an opioid, one patient had co-ingested benzodiazepine and three had co-ingested alcohol.

Compared to other poisoning admissions, recreational drug poisonings were three times more likely to occur between 3 am and 6 am than 9 am to 5pm and 40 to 60 percent more likely to occur from Friday to Sunday compared to a Monday. Males were 2.8 times more likely to present to hospital for recreational drug poisonings than females and those aged less than 30 were 1.6 times more likely to present than people aged 30 years and above.

"The finding that peak recreational poisoning admissions occurred on Fridays and Saturdays reflects a 'binge' culture, associated with weekday restraint and weekend excess of alcohol and recreational drugs," says Dr. Kate Chitty, the study's lead author, a Research Fellow at Sydney Medical School. "They represent a significant and potentially lethal form of harm associated with drug use."

Just over half of recreational drug poisonings (51 percent) included only one class of drug, while the remaining cases (49 percent) involved two or more classes of recreational substances.