Watching another tv special covering the epidemic of kids using their parents’ medicine cabinets as a supply. How common can that be? I"m in my late 50’s, with the usual range of minor health complaints, I never seem to have the fun pills in my house. Who are the parents with stockpiles of oxy? It seems like lazy sensationalism. What’s the Doper dope take?
Pharm parties are as real as rainbow parties.
I recall back in the day (70’s) parties where everyone brought pills from mom and dad’s cabinet and plopped them in bowls and mixed them up.
As I recall my mother was prescribed amphetamines to help her lose weight after pregnancy and Valium so she could sleep at night after taking amphetamines all day. All the other mom’s in the neighborhood were doing the same. Things did not end well.
I know people now who have scrips for crazy amounts of pain killers. They go to doctors a lot. I couldn’t get my dr to prescribe anything for me, when I had wicked pain, and hadn’t slept for days while awaiting shoulder surgery. 
Actually, you’re wrong. With prescription drugs being available via the Internet, and “pill mills” all over the place, drugs of abuse are easier to get than ever.
There are plenty if parents with pills in their cabinets. At any one time I’ve got over 300 percocets and 200 morphine tablets in the house. But my kids won’t get to them, at least without me knowing it since they’re kept secured.
I have no doubt the abuse happens. Hell I’m very careful not to advertise my medication in public conversation as I have been approved several times by friends of friends offering to purchase any “extra” pills I might have. Granted, these aren’t kids, but my ex-brother in law (who is now dead and gone from an overdose at 28) was a great example of a kid who would stall from parents, friends and relatives if they had pills in his reach. However, like everything else drug related there’s no doubt the problem is exaggerated many times greater than it actually is.
My parents have been on Vicodin and a muscle relaxer called Soma since I was little for various pain. Now that they’re older, they’ve added things like Oxycontin and morphine into the mix.
My brothers used to intercept their pills (they came in the mail), get the envelope open and then reseal them somehow so the package looked totally untouched. Then my mom would call the pharmacy and complain that they were short yet again this month. She never did get replacement pills for the ones that were missing, though I’m sure she was tagged as a junkie from early on because she always, always tried to get her pills filled early.
My brothers to this day are junkie sacks of shit in their 30s. My oldest brother was even kind enough to swipe all but a few of my mom’s oxycontin the last time she let him stay with her for a little bit. I think they probably would have been losers anyway but that level of access has certainly made it easier for them.
Several years ago, I had to take Oxycodone twice a day after rotator cuff surgery. I was scared stiff of developing a dependency on them, so I quit taking them as soon as I was able to. When I related this at work, a number of people came up to me in private and asked if they could have (or buy) the remaining pills.
My friend’s daughter did an interview for the news about Oxy & Fentanyl addiction a few months before she passed away. When asked how she gets the drugs she said that “older people…bad people” steal them from legit patients and sell them to kids.
Yeah, I guess I’m a bit surprised too. I’m about the same age and raid my medicine cabinet and you’d have less heartburn and would be somewhat more regular.
I think it’s bullshit. It happens, but not NEARLY to the extent that it’s played out in the media. Most people inhaling narcotics are drinking and have various other meds to go with it. I can’t even get codeine for a degenerated disc (very legitimate pain) so it’s hard to believe doctors are handing out this stuff like candy. In fact, I’m coonvinced you have to have terminal cancer or a recent amputee to have your pain even remotely considered.
When I worked at the grocery store pharmacy, I had elderly customers who took OxyContin for assorted types of chronic pain, and they would ask us, “Am I going to become a junkie?” We assured them that if they were legitimately taking them as ordered, they would not become addicted. Dependent, probably, but not addicted. And what’s the difference? If you are dependent on drugs, your quality of life goes up. If you are addicted, your QOL goes down.
I had a classmate who died from OD’ing on stolen drugs, so this kind of thing is very real.
p.s. When I listed my house for sale, one of the first things I was told was “Lock up any abusable prescription drugs.” I did have some Vicodin from an injury a few years earlier, and I simply took it with me whenever my house was shown.
To a degree, I see the commercials and think it’s blown out of proportion, but I also know for sure that prescription meds are being gotten and sold by usually older people who have legitimate pain concerns , ( don’t ask me how they actually cope with the pain ) because it’s their way of making ends meet month to month.
This was told to me by my son who had addictions to various pain pills, among other issues. He started off getting in trouble with weed at about 16 at school and from then on to the age of 32 it was like a monster that grew bigger and bigger.
As far as ease of getting about 4 years ago I was sent to a pain clinic and prescribed lortab, which I think would be maybe the tamest of the painkillers, but not sure? Anyway I learned forget locking them up at my house, I would keep what I needed for a week in my purse and the rest at my Mom’s.
I don’t do that anymore, my son passed away in April from a cocktail of benzos and fentanyl. -(
As for being dependent vs being addicted, I am not really sure what the difference is… I know when I am prescribed 3 a day. If I miss two doses, there is going to be some lousy withdrawals coming on. Isn’t that really the same thing as addicted in a way?
Back in college (67-71) I was prescribed:
Dexamphetamine (Meth Lite) to wake up
Doriden (now, thankfully, off the market, so i am told). It was a nasty sleeper with the street name “Ciba”. (it was made by Ciba-Geigy, which stamped everything with “CIBA”).
Luckily, I found the psychedelics, and rarely used those blunt-instrument pills.
Now, with one of those “incurable, progressive, pain-off-the-scale” diseases, and life-long tolerance for all CNS depressants, I have plenty of opioids on hand, and keep a photocopy of the 'scripts in my wallet, should the question arise.
I’m told the house down the street is a supply house for local junkies.
I’d like to compare inventories (no, not really).
But yeah, a kid finding my stash would be either rich or dead.
And I think you might be wrong about this. Certainly prior to the Ryan Haight Act it was easier than ever to get scheduled 2 and 3 drugs via online pharmacies, but my understanding is that the passage of that act made it much more difficult. I also feel like a lot of "pill mills’ have been shut down and pain clinics are operating under very tight protocols and will terminate a patient for one slip-up. Most states have also instituted Prescription Monitoring Programs, which makes it very easy for a doctor or clinic to catch someone in the act of doctor-shopping and filling multiple prescriptions for controlled substances.
Obviously it’s still quite possible to illegally obtain drugs and my heart goes out to those of you who have lost a loved one to addiction, but I really don’t think it’s easier than ever for a person to get their hands on controlled substances.
I was under the impression that middle aged white women were among the largest demographic for drug abuse. It’s prescription but it’s still abuse.
Back on the day when I ran with a group of punk-rocker/drug fiends, any time there was a party in the offing (hosted by some naive girl whose parents were on vaca.) we would show up and one of our group would bee-line it for the medicine cabinet in the master bedroom. This was SOP. As it was the mid 90’s there wasn’t any OxyContin but usually plenty of Vicodin, percocets, muscle relaxers and mommies little helper: Valium.
We were assholes.
I know people who think the same thing. But I had a druggie boyfriend once who would spend an entire day bouncing from ER to ER getting percocet and valium/ativan/xanax, depending on the hospital/doctor. Even after the whole drug reporting/information sharing thing started, he’d just hop over to the bordering state and get them there.
Oh, and I get codeine for colds all the time. I’ve been getting guaifenesin with codeine syrup every year, sometimes twice a year, since I was about 6. I have an active prescription for percocet right now for back pain and I’m pregnant (which blows my sister’s mind; she has back pain, too, and just gets told to lose weight).
The only reason I have percocet is because my doctor wasn’t comfortable with me talking ultram, which is what I’ve been taking for the past three years.
The only time I’ve had a problem getting pain pills was when I was prescribed darvocet for an arm injury and called to complain about a rash/itching. The woman I talked to assumed I was looking to get “upgraded” to a better high and balked saying that such a reaction is extremely rare for that particular medication up until the point I asked specifically for tramadol; she was more than happy to substitute it then.
From everything I read drugs are way over-prescribed in the USA. And I see it among friends and family. People go to the doctor feeling bad and expect to come home with pills to ease their ailments. And drug companies are busy making up conditions so they can sell more drugs to more people.
So yes, I could certainly believe that a medicine cabinet full of various types of drugs would be a tempting target for those that wanted to take recreational drugs, which is a lot of people. I never got it, I can’t remember the last time I took as much as an aspirin.
My wife has as much oxymorphoneas she wants - she’s deathly allergic to aspirin, and has hives from tylenol, and the doctor decided let’s not even try ibuprofen - it’s too chemically close to aspirin.
We’ve got about a 5 year supply.