God there is so much disinformation out there about opiod addiction and abuse. Of course all we get are "The drug companies are evil" when it is a multifactorial problem with no easy solution.
First of all let's get a few things straight about addiction in general. People have been trying to chemically alter their consciousness since the dawn of time. This isn't some new phenomenon.
Secondly there is one major factor with all junkies and that is speed to high. That is pretty much all they care about. They don't want to wait. Why is this important? Well as I explain some basic pharmacology and drug development history, it will all be clear.
So the article gives the impression that Oxycontin is some new drug. Well, that is false. Oxycontin is a relatively new formulation of a drug that is 101 years old. That's right boys and girls. Oxycodone was developed in 1916 and became commercially available in 1939.
For most of its history, oxcycodone was dispensed in combination with aspirin or acetaminophen. This substantially reduced the abuse potential by junkies because taking it orally doesn't accomplish the speed to high and injecting acetaminophen and aspirin weren't on the menu. Additionally, 8 grams of acetaminophen will send you into liver failure.
While drugs like percocet, percodan, tylox, endocet (all the same active pain ingredient) worked to relieve short term pain they had limitations in that you had to take them four to six times a day and again, had to worry about the long and short term damage of aspirin and acetaminophen usage.
For patients with cancer, these were and are suboptimal options for treating their pain and most often physicians had to turn to intravenous forms of morphine. While this works well for treating pain, it does create a quality of life issue in that you are constantly hooked up to an IV and you run the risk of line infections and it is very costly. When at all possible, it is best to use the digestive tract.
Then along came Oxycontin. It was straight oxycodone in a sustained release form. Sustained release was not a new concept in drug development and revolutionized how many drugs were administered and improved compliance tremendously. Many studies have shown that patient adherence drops off tremendously when they have to take a drug three and four times a day. Once a day is ideal, but twice a day is manageable. Unfortunately, not all drugs have long enough half lives to be suitable to once a day dosing. Enter sustained release formulations. I won't get into the pharmaceutics about how they work, but rest assured they revolutionized drug deliver.
This is what Oxycontin did and despite the unintended consequences, it was a revolutionary addition to pain management. You got a once a day, effective pain management option without the addition of aspirin and acetaminophen. It was truly life saving.
Of course it didn't take long for the drug seeking community to learn about this great drug. Soon they realized that all they need to do was crush the time released tablet and mix it with water, inject it into their vein and VOILA instant high. Of course this was preferable to some because it gave them a safer route to get high than going the heroin route dealing with sketchy people where quality assurance could not be guaranteed.
Here are a few fun facts that you may not know. This has happened before. Back in the 1950s Sterling Drug Company developed a drug called pentazocine for analgesia. I believe it began being marketed for pain in the late sixties. It didn't take long for drug addicts to learn that they could crush pentazocine and get high. They also would combine it with an antihistamine called tripelennamine which gave a euphoric sensation. The combination was popularly known as Ts and Blues. Of course Sterling came under pressure back then just as Purdue is today. Their solution was to combine pentazocine with naloxone. Naloxone is an opioid antagonist and is used to reverse the effects of opioids. It is not absorbed in the stomach, and by combining it with pentazocine patients could get the pain relief, but if drug users tried to crush it and inject it the effects of pentazocine were mitigated by the naloxone. It went by the trade name Talwin NX. It had a very limited use back in the day.
While everyone is all hyped up on beating up Purdue and Oxycontin, it would help them to know that in 2013 Purdue formulated a "tamper proof" version that is harder to crush and turns into a gel when you fuck with it. It is very difficult to inject and can't be snorted. Why is this important? One need only go back to my first point about SPEED TO HIGH. Drug addicts aren't interested in the oral formulation of Oxycontin. They are only interested in crushing and injecting it. Taking it orally is too slow of a high for them. While this new formation doesn't completely mitigate abuse, I have heard that for the most part drug addicts have since moved on from oxycontin to other things.
That is why we are seeing this new rush to fentanyl. Again, fentanyl is not a new drug. It has been around a long time.
So now we get to the why's of the opioid abuse problem. My belief is that the drugs themselves aren't the problem. They are societal. I trace it back to a break down of the family unit thanks to lefties and no fault divorce. The hollowing out of jobs thanks to outsourcing and unrestrained illegal immigration. When people don't feel they have anything to live for they are going to turn to drugs. And lastly, the recent obsession of those to "legalize marijuana". It amazes me how people can compartmentalize the two as if one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. That isn't to say that every marijuana user is going to turn into a heroin addict, but when you normalize aberrant behavior you can't be shocked when you get what you get.
Unfortunately the politicians who created the cycle of despair pushing people to drug use are now going to sit on their moral high perches and "come up with a solution". Of course it will probably center around the drug companies and not deal with the deep society and moral decline that leads people to these decisions in the first place.
So what does all of this mean? It means that people are always going to want to get high. Whether it is alcohol, heroin or oxycontin they are going to get high. When people think they have nothing to live for they resort to drugs to reduce their despair. After 8 years of shit during the Obama administration it is no wonder people wanted to numb themselves.
The hard reality is that you can't do much about the people that are already addicted. You can really only try to keep future generations from joining the cluster. Democrats secretly like these zombies as they are easier for them to control
