Intentional misuse leading to overdose can include using prescribed or non-prescribed drugs in excessive quantities in an attempt to produce euphoria.

[4] Unintentional misuse can include errors in dosage caused by failure to read or understand product labels.

Accidental overdoses may also be the result of over-prescription, failure to recognize a drug's active ingredient or unwitting ingestion by children.

[6] Opioid overdoses can also cause pinpoint pupils, and blue lips and nails due to low levels of oxygen in the blood.

However, if they will not, or cannot, due to an altered level of consciousness, provide this information, a search of the home or questioning of friends and family may be helpful.

Negative drug-drug interactions have sometimes been misdiagnosed as an acute drug overdose, occasionally leading to the assumption of suicide.

[13] Healthcare institution-based naloxone prescription programs have also helped reduce rates of opioid overdose in the U.S. state of North Carolina, and have been replicated in the U.S.

Monitoring of the patient should continue before and throughout the treatment process, with particular attention to temperature, pulse, respiratory rate, blood pressure, urine output, electrocardiography (ECG) and O2 saturation.

[22] Poison control centers and medical toxicologists are available in many areas to provide guidance in overdoses both to physicians and to the general public.

[25] The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 19,250 people died of accidental poisoning in the U.S. in the year 2004 (eight deaths per 100,000 population).

[29] In 2008 testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Leonard J. Paulozzi,[30] a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that in 2005 more than 22,000 American people died due to overdoses, and the number is growing rapidly.

Paulozzi also testified that all available evidence suggests unintentional overdose deaths are related to the increasing use of prescription drugs, especially opioid painkillers.

[34] New CDC data in 2024 demonstrates U.S. drug overdose deaths have significantly declined, marking the potential for the first year with fewer than 100,000 fatalities since 2020.