User:YiwokeKogano

From Cockers Sunday Service Archive

Hydrocodone, sold under brand names like Lortab and Vicodin, and also the stronger oxycodone, most favored as OxyContin and Percocet, are devastating the younger population of Oklahoma, says their state Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The opioid painkiller epidemic is leading with a critical overload for facilities offering hydrocodone and OxyContin detox.

According for the state drug bureau, hydrocodone will be the number one prescribed controlled substance within the state, and oxycodone is number three, just behind diazepam, (usually known as Valium) within the number two spot.

To get an concept of how much hydrocodone and oxycodone is used inside the state, the bureau's spokesman Mark Woodward highlights the state's prescription monitoring database shows 111 million doses of hydrocodone are prescribed on a monthly basis in Oklahoma, enough for starters dose every day for each person within the state.

Oklahoma consumes as much hydrocodone since the entire state of California, which has 10 x the population, and oxycodone, the active narcotic in OxyContin, is a little way behind.

"That's crazy," Woodward told the Oklahoman. "We've seen huge increases within the last 10 years, only the amounts of them being filled."

Dr. Charles Shaw, an addiction specialist, told the newspaper he considers the present use and abuse of prescription painkillers an epidemic. He says pharmaceutical companies market them aggressively, government drug agencies "have dropped the ball" in controlling their use, and physicians who prescribe them get almost no learning dealing with addiction.

"I kept seeing over and over and over people in their 20s dependent on OxyContin," Dr. Shaw told the Oklahoman. "Once they took it, they can never get away from it." OC, or oxy because it is known on the street, is the only opiate that may be swallowed, snorted or injected, Dr. Shaw said. "It's much like heroin in pill form. It is worse than heroin."

Many victims of oxycodone and hydrocodone addiction don't focus on illicitly obtain drugs, they get addicted taking legitimate prescriptions for pain. OxyContin, a time-release version of oxycodone, is definitely an effective painkiller, lasting approximately 12 hours. But all narcotics open the entranceway to physical dependence and addiction to your one who uses them, even as prescribed. And OxyContin is particularly addictive. In fact, the business that makes it, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, was fined $630 million a year ago for failing to disclose to physicians as well as the FDA just how incredibly addictive it really is.

OxyContin is very favored by addicts, including former heroin addicts, simply because they can crush the tablets to defeat the time-release mechanism, and after that snort or inject the crushed powder for any massive, heroin-like high. From a few of these experiences, almost no person can escape dependence or addiction.

When someone becomes dependent or dependent on opioid painkillers, they has to be weaned off of them slowly to stop painful withdrawal symptoms. But most addicts find the weaning-off process too hard to acquire through. Reversion to drugs is common.

Most drug detox programs are 'one-size-fits-all', basically ignoring all however the most obvious personal needs of patients. In many cases, patients are merely told to go home and told to taper off, which is comparable to telling a binge eater or perhaps alcoholic to "just say no." The 'cold turkey' approach is almost as impossible. Patients are to place it simply inside a room and asked to "tough it out." Neither technique is successful, for many but a very, very few.

Successful alternative drug detox programs are available, however, called 'medical drug detox' programs. These provide 24/7 medical supervision and assistance, and are personally tailored to each patient's unique metabolism and current health requirements.

Medical drug detox programs avoid the worst with the withdrawal symptoms, are much faster plus more thorough than the cookie-cutter variety, and are routinely successful for almost any person hooked on prescription drugs like narcotic painkillers or benzodiazepines, or to alcohol. And medical drug detox programs are particularly successful for folks suffering from OxyContin addiction, often taking merely a week or less.

In an area almost devoid of an promise of recovery, medical drug detox offers new hope.