Opioids Now Most Prescribed Class of Medications in America

[Alice]

Opioids Now Most Prescribed Class of Medications in America

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110405161906.htm

That's pretty crazy when you consider how many people are on say antidepressants, and that opioid scripts exceed even them. Do they mean that more people are using opioids than any other class, or just that there are more scripts (maybe each script only lasts a week so they give 52 scripts a year, which inflates the number?. Where as an antidepressant or some other script lasts a month or something?)?

Prescriptions for hydrocodone and oxycodone account for 84.9 percent of opioid prescriptions. Over ten years, there has been a fivefold increase in admissions to substance abuse programs for opioid addiction.

opioid medications such as hydrocodone and oxycodone are associated with high rates of abuse, particularly among young adults. One in four 18-25 year olds will abuse prescription pain killers in their lifetime.

A large share of the prescriptions to young adults was from dentists, and researchers believe there is a need for medical professionals to evaluate alternative pain medications in this particularly vulnerable age group.

"The scope of the problem is vast -- opioid overdose is now the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States and the prevalence is second only to marijuana," said Thomas McLellan, PhD, co-author of the studies and director of the new Center for Substance Abuse Solutions

Interesting that a lot of prescriptions come from dentists, I guess I've never considered it would be something that they would prescribe? And represcribe. That's some pretty strong medication for toothache, or even for post-extraction pain management?

Edited April 7, 2011 by Alice

[Auxin]

Looks like its total script number, so comparing it to antidepressants is misleading since those tend to be prescribed in 1 month+ bottles with several refills specified. Its more creepy when considering that scripts for antibiotics are for 7 to 14 days with no refils and opiate scripts outnumber even them. Opiates here are prescribed in 1-2 week scripts for minor or fast healing things, with 0 refils. For chronic issues (including oxy/hydro addiction or chronic bitching) they tend to be scripted for 2 weeks to 3 months, sometimes with refills. For years my dad was on 10 mg oxy 6 times a day on 30 day scripts with 1-2 refills, he eventually was switched to bottles of 540 10 mg oxys with 0 refills, when he was running low the doc had to authorize a re-up and the bottle would arrive in the mail, he averaged one of them every 80 days. So you cant assume opiate scripts here average 1 weeks in duration since there are loads of addicts, particularly the elderly.

Dentists here usually give 1 week scripts of 5 mg hydrocodone after root canals and tooth extractions. Its not typically represcribed and I've never even heard of a dentist prescribing oxy tho I know they are allowed to if the patient bitches enough. When I had a root canal I was given one of those hydro scripts as if it were a handshake.. never took a single pill lol. I've had my fill of addictive drugs.

[poisonshroom]

Thats scary (op I mean) - whats even scarier is there really isnt much out there thats as effective for pain relief as opiates/oids. Personally Im not too sure why so many of those scripts are dental - I had a tooth pulled out a few months ago, and they gave me a script for voltaren (Non steroidial anti-inflammatory), which was good enough for the minor pain the procedure caused.

And even considering antidepressants and such, which tend to have longer lasting scripts, most people take that kind of thing for years or even the rest of their life, whereas opiates usually arent necessary after a couple of weeks at the most for most things (excluding chronic conditions). So either there are millions of americans with chronic pain or lots of addicts.

There has to be things around or in development that are at least as effective - I wonder if the big pharma companies have something to do with this (eg suppressing other treatments in favour of addictive opiates/oids).

[Auxin]

[rant]

There are lots of addicts, and lots of pill farming for drug 'abuse' (get old boys to whine to their doc for drugs, then buy them from the old boys and sell to junkies, 'fossil farming', its a major black market industry here)

Admittedly those are unlikely to be the majority of scripts. I think a major factor is how much of pansy assed weaklings most americans choose to be lol. I dont mean that to sound anti-american, its a genuine problem we need to address here. Growing up as an urban american I never much realized how intolerant we are trained to be to pain. I myself was raised to think that all pain was a horror and the proper response was to hide from it and pity myself. I wasnt taught it in those terms but that was the essence of the thing. It was just normal. Pains annoying so its a insult to our egos and a abomination to nature, right? Eventually I started to see there was something not right in that part of western psychology, then I made a startling observation.. I had this dog that would give a warning nip to anyone that seemed a threat to me, no matter how minor. He'd rarely break the skin and usually not even leave a mark. Most people would freak out and cradle their arm, I even saw grown men cry and women run away screaming from a 2 cm red mark. A few even called the cops. Then some of my redneck relatives came over from Deep in the boonies and a 10 year old boy got bit, a little worse than normal- it broke the skin, I asked if he was ok and he just shrugged "meh, I'm fine" and he went on visiting, not even noticing it.

Hold on!! A 10 year old with more pain tolerance than a 35 year old ex con thats 40 lbs bone and 200 lbs muscle!?!

Secret was he wasnt trained to fear and loath and amplify pain through rampant aversion and self pity. I tried it and once I learned the trick chronic decades long pain that colored every waking hour of my life suddenly became essentially nothing.

So yeah, there is lots of pain in america... and most of its imaginary. That doesnt make it less real but that does mean we dont need opiates to fix it.

If I bother to care about it, sure my back hurts right now. Its not much of an issue if I just (honestly) dont care tho. I didnt even know if it hurt until I shifted my attention to it

[/rant]

[Teljkon]

sdfssffs

Edited December 19, 2021 by Teljkon