More than one in 10 Australians who inject drugs are misusing quetiapine, potentially as a “trip terminator” to come down from novel psychoactive drugs or stimulants, research suggests.

Misuse of the second-generation antipsychotic across the country has stayed “relatively consistent” from 2011 to 2018 despite restrictions on PBS scripts for low-dose quetiapine put into place in 2014, say the authors of a new study.

This was based on seven years of data from the Illicit Drug Reporting System, an annual survey of almost 1000 people who inject drugs.

In the most recent survey, quetiapine misuse in the previous six months was associated with use of novel psychoactive substances (NPS), stimulants and benzodiazepines in the same period.