Phenergan Rarely Used for Stomach Flu Nausea

The drug that Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) said he took to treat an inflamed stomach is commonly used to control the nausea from prescription painkillers and rarely used for stomach ailments, experts said Friday.

Phenergan is also sometimes used by drug abusers to enhance their highs from opium-derived painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, said Dr. Bankole Johnson, an addiction expert at the University of Virginia.

He added that it was also frequently given to recovering painkiller addicts to manage their withdrawal symptoms.

Phenergan is a powerful drug, commonly used by cancer patients who need to take high doses of opiates to control their pain.

Johnson said using it to quell the nausea of gastroenteritis, sometimes called stomach flu, is virtually unheard of. “It would be like using morphine to treat a paper cut,” he said.

Julie Dopheide, associate professor of pharmacy at USC, agreed that Phenergan was an unusual choice for stomach flu, which is generally transient and mild.

“Most doctors would not prescribe an anti-nausea medicine for the stomach flu unless the person was throwing up violently,” she said.

Kennedy, who crashed a car into a barrier in Washington before dawn Thursday, said he had taken Phenergan and the sleep medicine Ambien. Kennedy said he had no recollection of the crash or his subsequent interaction with police.

On Friday, Kennedy said that he would be getting treatment for a recurrence of his addiction to unspecified painkillers. He said he had been treated for his addiction at Christmas at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He blamed the recurrence of his addiction on the treatment for his stomach flu.

Johnson said he was not surprised that Phenergan had a role in Kennedy’s addiction. The drug is a mild sedative. If Kennedy had used the drug or a similar medicine in the past while taking painkillers, Phenergan’s sedative effect might have prompted a linked urge for painkillers, he said.

“The sedation ... can act as an external cue triggering a craving,” he said.

The other drug Kennedy said he took, Ambien, is also used at times by drug abusers, Johnson said. It can boost the effect of the painkillers and “mellow out” a high, he said.

Ambien, also a prescription drug, has been associated with very rare cases of people driving or walking in their sleep. People often have no memory of their actions when they wake up.

In many of those cases, people were taking extremely high doses of the drug, mixing it with alcohol or taking antidepressants, experts said.