I’ve known several people who usually for financial reasons have to break up their pills, my neice has panic attacks and was doing it with xanax each pill yielding up to ten pieces.
Do pharmaceutical companies make sure pills are evenly mixed fillers and actives?
In general yes, but by no means absolutely all are. There was a type of ibuprofen + codeine pill sold in the UK over the counter in around 2005ish that if you split it up in the right way you could isolate the codeine half from the ibuprofen half.
Eventually someone cottoned on (or maybe they just changed the manufacturing method, I dunno) and there were loads of inadvertant ibuprofen doses from people who were taking hundreds of the things.
Here is an archived thread detailing the process back from 2004, includes lots of pics and as you can see you would never think looking at the pill that it had two halves.
Note to anyone wanting risk free codeine now: Do not do this unless you like dieing.
I don’t know the factual answer to the question but I do know that if you’re breaking up pills you might not be getting the dosage that the doctor wants you to get.
I can’t imagine a responsible doctor wanting someone to take more xanax than they actually needed, not for panic attacks anyway.
Also, a lot of pills are basically the same price. Take a look at a price list of various things and you will often see 1mg of X = £5.20 10mg of X = £5.30 100mg of X = £5.40 - so in a country where you have to pay for your own pills it would surely make a lot of sense to split them if you can. So if prescribed 1mg of X a day, surely a lot better to order 100mg of it for £5.40 rather than £520 (ignoring that you can’t split a pill 100x, unless the pill is a pepperoni pizza)
Xanax is fine to split Xanax XR is not.
In general -pills that have one active ingredient - and no time release - should be fine to split. Many of these have score lines in the pill to make it easier to split. If you think about it - if they werent evenly mixed - they couldn’t be sure they’d be ok individually (it isn’t like they are measuring each pill).
It will tell you in the guide that comes with the drug if you can’t split it.
Well, yes and no.
The odd and complicated way that pharmaceuticals are priced means that pills with, say, 10 mg often don’t cost twice as much as pills with 5 mg. They can even be the same price. Many doctors will give patients who need only 5 mg a prescription for 10 mg and tell them to split the pill so they can save money.
If you need 10 mg, then this is obviously not a good idea. But everyone games the system and splitting pills is both legal and ethical on both sides in numerous cases.
Several kinds of pills should not be split. Timed release pills shouldn’t and those coated to limit digestion in the stomach also should not. Some pills are so bitter that they are contained in a palatable shell. In general, though, both prescription and over-the-counter pills should be blended near perfectly and modern methods make this into an art. Some weird off-brand names and “natural” medications may not use methods as sophisticated, which is a major reason I am leery of them.
Why is splitting time-release pills a no-no, assuming a 1/2 dosage of that pill is in order?
Some do, some don’t - e.g. microcapsule type time release pills will be fine split. But some time release pills you can basically think of as an onion, with little “layers” of the drug, each of them with coating that takes a known time to dissolve in your stomach.
Cut right through the onion, and each of those layers can dissolve at once.
(note that that is an topographical analogy; they are in practice in a matrix most of the time but it’s exactly the same principle - more surface area and the WRONG surface area at that)
Got it. Thanks.
Some pills are time released. Breaking them up, crushing, or chewing are not recommended!
Or what was said in post #6, post #7, post #8, and post #9. But that’s only 40% of the thread.
I asked the same question a while back. My first thread here, in fact.
Very nice analogy; I’m going to steal that for medication teaching. Thanks!
‘Fractionation’ is the term, right? Dividing a solid substance into milligram parts is no joke.
Because it’s a great recipe for dying. Time released pills provide a controlled amount of medication released over time. Thus us accomplished usually by the dissolving of the coating on the pill. If you split the pill, you expose the chewy center and all of the medication can be released at one time, resulting in overdose.
Mmmm, chewy onion centers…
Honestly, it depends on the particular medication. For a drug that is immediate release, in most cases it is acceptable to cut them into smaller bits… Though, not for everything. It is normally safe to assume that if the tablet has a score (Dictionary: a notch, scratch, or incision; a stroke or line. ) on it, it is safe to be cut. If it doesn’t have a score, it may or may not… Ask your Pharmacist.
As WhyNot said, good analogy! I’m going to have to remember this myself. Consider it stolen!