The Prescription Drug Epidemic is Deliberate..

a reply to: Mjab6910

I have never had a doctor able to access it, so it must not be available everywhere.

....Watch the peaks and valleys of drug use and how they coincide with the economic trends.....


Just saying....

a reply to: lovebeck

Yes my doctor is a Rheumatologist.

a reply to: Aazadan

I have. But like I said not all doctors are in that program though. I'm sure it'll become more popular in the near future.

a reply to: TechniXcality

There's not a hint of poppy in oxycontin. Hydrocodone and oxycodone are purely synthetic lookalikes.....designed to trick the body into thinking it just shook hands with a poppy.....but didn't.

originally posted by: KeithCooper
a reply to: TechniXcality

There's not a hint of poppy in oxycontin. Hydrocodone and oxycodone are purely synthetic lookalikes.....designed to trick the body into thinking it just shook hands with a poppy.....but didn't.

Not at all true. Hydrocodone and Oxycodone are Semisynthetic opioids but they are synthesized from Codeine which is straight from the teet of some of Afghanistan's finest floral bouquets. There are some purely synthetic opioids used in pain management like Fentanyl which is synthesized from a different Papaver but even then, they are still derived from a type of poppy. Morphine, codeine and Heroin all come from a poppy called Papaver Somniferum. It is the poppy plant with the highest concentration of morphine( and morphine analogous) alkaloids.

a reply to: Aazadan

At Prevea everything goes into the computer and all my doctors can see what each other is doing, my meds list, condions, etc. I go somewhere outside of Prevea and I have to have all that info, but the place I go to(which is a pain manangment clinic) are very good at talking to each other. From what I have experienced at my pain clinic they have you sign an aggreement and I get urine tested every so often(I know people who get it everytime they go), and you have to let them know if another doctor gives you pain meds. Like I had surgery and got the excat same thing I am on, but I still had to let them know. Also they don't push the drugs as bad, they push more injections and other stuff. I think that though is because someone I knew abused the system, they would get pain pills and count out how much they would use, then sell the rest. They got caught(thank god), but in the process made it so a lot of people were looked at harder for pain meds(which is good too). I only use my pills as needed and I hold off until I can't anymore. My sig other gets pissed at me cuz I do wait so long, but I don't like the way they make me feel, and I need to be aware for my job.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: tothetenthpower

From my limited knowledge of the US medical system, I would have to say you're right. Drugs/medicines are nothing other than a product for profit. The very fact that they're advertised on TV tells you all you need to know and the fact that they're addictive - yay! More profit.

Incidentally, what happened in 2006 to lower sales? Did another product become popular, was there a change in policy or something else?

ETA - from your article:

Purdue tells doctors to prescribe stronger doses, not more frequent ones, when patients complain that OxyContin doesn’t last 12 hours. That approach creates risks of its own. Research shows that the more potent the dose of an opioid such as OxyContin, the greater the possibility of overdose and death.

Jeezo.

My wife has back problems and the first the thing the Doctor wanted was a couple-grand surgery and a pain medication prescription for the rest of her life. Legal addiction, legal drug dealer. [SNIPPED]


But alas, good luck trying to talk sense to the Average American. Allot of people are so emotionally invested to thinking that Big Pharma cares for them if you say anything negative from Pharmaceuticals to Profit-driven Vaccines you're considered Mentally Unstable.
It's ironic the amount of idiocy on this country, that same idiocy is what's ripped the country to shreds along with its population's health.
Now that I have a child and have roamed the halls of doctor offices, it's a very scary realization when you see Fear Posters on every wall designed specifically to dupe the ignorant parents into shooting their children up with anything and every thing. They all have big, wide smiles walking in and out of the office, totally confident the American Medical System will keep them healthy.

My thoughts:

You see illegal drugs surge in US popularity depending ont he wars we are waging. In the 60's and 70's, heroin was epidemic in the US while we were in Vietnam/Laos. In the 80's we interdict ourselves in Latin America and see the coke problem skyrocket, and crack enter the market. Now we are in Afghanistan, and heroin is back on top.

I think the most insidious part: not enough people were buying the heroin, since they take pharmaceuticals (safer dosing, etc). So what happens? Uncle Sam protects its lucrative heroin trade by rescheduling pharmaceuticals and creating a hysteria among doctors and pharmacists. So now you can walk in with an arm gnawed of by an alligator, and they won't give you narcotic pain relief.

Pharmaceuticals are fine, so long as it doesn't step on Uncle Sam's profits.

(granted, "Uncle Sam" my just be high ranking generals/officials within the government, and not the government itself....but they did seem to control the DEA/FDA)

originally posted by: peter vlar

originally posted by: KeithCooper
a reply to: TechniXcality

There's not a hint of poppy in oxycontin. Hydrocodone and oxycodone are purely synthetic lookalikes.....designed to trick the body into thinking it just shook hands with a poppy.....but didn't.

Not at all true. Hydrocodone and Oxycodone are Semisynthetic opioids but they are synthesized from Codeine which is straight from the teet of some of Afghanistan's finest floral bouquets. There are some purely synthetic opioids used in pain management like Fentanyl which is synthesized from a different Papaver but even then, they are still derived from a type of poppy. Morphine, codeine and Heroin all come from a poppy called Papaver Somniferum. It is the poppy plant with the highest concentration of morphine( and morphine analogous) alkaloids.

Is it true that all semi-synthetic analgesic opioids require poppy opium to be produced? That's to say, if all the poppy fields of the world were burnt and rendered useless, could hydrocodone and oxycodone still be produced. In a previous post, I linked an article illuminating the possibility of deriving opioids from yeast as opposed to poppy.

a reply to: BeefNoMeat

No, those specific analogues would not be able to be produced or recreated from an entirely synthetic source. It's like the difference between say Fentanyl and Morphine. Morphine is refined from the Papaver Somniferum plant and Morphine is one of the main alkaloid antagonists that exist naturally within that specific species of Papaver.

This is where we get into the differences between an Opiate and an Opioid. In contrast to that, Fentanyl is completely synthetic and derived from chemically extrapolating the opioid from an analogue similar to, but far less potent than, morphine in its natural state. I'm not a chemist so I'm not entirely sure of how they specifically go about synthesizing and purifying the analogue but the end result is a product that is 50-100 times more potent than morphine.

This means you can obtain similar analgesic results with less product but the downside is that the withdrawal and detox from the synthetic opioid is much more grueling than the withdrawal and detox from an actual opiate or even a semi-synthetic like Hydrocodone or Oxycodone.

Now that I've meandered far off my original point... you wouldn't be able to synthesize or recreate Hydrocodone or Oxycodone from a yeast based(or any other base) source but they could likely synthesize something chemically similar much in the way that Chinese labs stay one step ahead of Western governments attempt to curb "legal highs" like the synthetic cannabis by constantly reformulating the chemical structure by subtly altering one molecule at a time to keep their "safe" or "legal" variants in check because they can alter chemical formulas much quicker than governments can pass legislation. The end result could be so,egging that works the same or similar to the original semi-synthetic opiates or you could end up with a nightmare chimera of a drug with no long term data sets to determine safety and efficaciousness of thst specific chemical signature. I'll go back and check your citation because the above paragraph operates under a host of assumptions, maybe' sand what if's?! Without knowing the specifics of what and how they are extracting and synthesizing their compounds.

The short answer though is that if every of the genus Papaver were eradicated from tge face of the Earth then the current opiate analgesic market as we see it today would cease to exist because all Opiates and semi-synthetic derivatives require one species or another of the Papaver genus to synthesize the compounds from.

a reply to: peter vlar

Thanks for the reply. Although the last sentence would have would sufficed

Here's a researcher claiming semi-synthetic opioids cradle-to-grave life cycle is a mere 5 weeks using yeast, as opposed to the 1 year required with the genus Papaver: Opioids for the Masses

a reply to: BeefNoMeat

Sorry! I get a little long winded sometimes and even more so when I'm trying to keep a train of thought moving coherently in one direction and one of my kids is firing off 100 questions every 10 seconds. Thanks for the link, much appreciated.

And what about people who don't take them as prescribed?

If the drug says, no more than two in any 24-hour period, then that's what it means. If it doesn't cut your pain, then it is up to you to resist the temptation to take more and call your doctor to complain, not simply pop more drugs to self-medicate.

I'll bet you that's what a lot of people do, or they figure that it's good for any pain and self-medicate.

a reply to: ketsuko

people like things that make them happy.

When i first started my meds i got a good feeling, but i knew one crucial thing, if i abused them they WOULDNT work as well and i had the good sense to follow the guidelines to the letter - some poeple dont see the big picture.

a reply to: ketsuko

Ketsuko, when I was on Adderall there were days I felt it was not working. I stuck to my guns and never took a extra pill. People who self med have a big problem when the run out of their RX after 30 days.

@ Biigs and Quantum,

Believe me between the chronic migraines and the bonespur in my neck ... I understand the temptation to self-medicate. I've lived with it for a long, long time. I've had and still do have addictive stuff in this house that is just. right. there ... every time my neck and shoulder are killing me ... every time my head is killing me and I just want to sleep a day or two away.

But I want to be an addict even less.

a reply to: ketsuko
I understand how you feel, you stayed strong and made a good choice. I am sorry about your pain!

a reply to: peter vlar

No need to apologize. When I see you pop in a thread I make a habit of reading your input. Sometimes, I even followup with questions. Guess, I am closer to one of your kids than an anonymous internet poster. Good luck and many blessings with the little ones.

originally posted by: ketsuko
And what about people who don't take them as prescribed?

If the drug says, no more than two in any 24-hour period, then that's what it means. If it doesn't cut your pain, then it is up to you to resist the temptation to take more and call your doctor to complain, not simply pop more drugs to self-medicate.

I'll bet you that's what a lot of people do, or they figure that it's good for any pain and self-medicate.

actually...i have a family full of nurses. none of them would agree with this.

yes, you call your doctor if they are available. But following murphy's law, 90% of the time you are in desperate need, itll be off house or weekends.

The real problem, to me, is that "medical science" is kept in the hands of a priest class, leaving the rest of us noninitiates to beg for relief in ignorance. That doesn't work for me. Im not stupid, and have a solid understanding of chemistry and human anatomy/physiology.

beyond that, the next problem is that our government tries to regulate medicine in a failed attempt to control a drug market. One that they stand to make an enormous fortune from, at that. i prefer to let junkies be gone of their own volition so that we can stop having to drag and carry dead weight around as a society.