How do junkies get all this OxyContin?

[Bigtoe39]

In ga it would be crazy to walk in and ask a dr how much for a script … So how to some people do it… I hsve a friend who is legit and the ones who don’t need it make the real ones hard to get what they need…, so there had to me help for the ones who really need it

[Boyo_Jim]

Never mind.

[Markxxx]

The thing people fail to understand is there is a market for pretty much any drugs. So the patient will doctor shop, if they don’t get OxyContin, they can get something else and sell that. Then it’s on to the next doctor to try again.

Also Mexico and the like is wide open. It’s so easy to get it there and other countries. Look at meth, the simple act of limiting sales and requiring ID to buy the drugs to make meth, stopped around 90% of the meth production. The production in the USA fell apart. But the use didn’t fall off one bit.

It’s simply moved to Mexico where you can get the drugs.

I have worked with Mexicans who don’t go to the doctor, they want penicillian they simply call their mom in Mexico and she gets it from her doctor and mails it up here.

[shiftless]

Ah, the big secret of drug use in America. Most of the druggies are using “legal” stuff (I believe), developed, manufactured and distrusted right in the good ol’ USA. All you need it a good excuse. If you use heroin, you are a low-life and we have the DEA to track you down and destroy the network that got the drugs to you. If you use Oxycotin you are an unfortunate and deserve our sympathy. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic but I suspect that a huge percentage of the opiates manufactured in the US are used recreationally and that is just fine with the drug companies and everybody else for that matter.

Personally, I don’t even believe that opiates do anything. I’ve had a lot of codeine and morphine for knee pain over the years (and tried a little recreational opium) and as far as I can tell it only make me irritable. Is that common? Doctors don’t believe me - “Here, let me increase your dosage” they say. Surely it isn’t that hard to get if you really want it when they press it on me constantly. If you want some serious drugs and can’t get them you’re just going to the wrong doctor.

[jlynes]

My nephew, who grew up in Woodstock and also became a heavy drug user led me to become very interested in searching for information on Oxycontin. I didn’t know that it is a drug used the same way as heroin and can be injected. He had long track marks on his arms when he was found shoeless wandering the streets this past winter. He had a psychotic breakdown and is now on antipsychotic medication.

I learned that pharmacists are making money on the side selling pills to drug dealers and that oxycontin can be purchased easily on the internet. One wonders why big pharmaceutical companies aren’t behind bars.

[Mama_Zappa]

@MandaJo

I find the whole system unbelievably frustrating and illogical: when my husband had 12 teeth pulled in one day, the dentist, who has known him for 2-3 years, still won’t prescribe more than 15 vicodin. But when my husband has, on a couple occasions, gone to urgent care when an abcess has suddenly flared up in a tooth (he has hereditary rickets, and his teeth are a ruin), the doctors there, who don’t know him from Adam, inevitably prescribe 30 vicodin without even being asked. I went into an urgent care one time with pus and blood running out of my infected ear in frankly disturbing quantities and was told to “look for drops at the pharmacy”, but I have friends who seem to have infinite prescriptions of every pain-killer and tranquillizer out there. I truly do not understand the system.

Never been prescribed oxycontin, but I’ve been given Vicodin a couple of times. Once for a root canal (I think I took 2 of them). Once for a crown (ditto). And once, when I broke my elbow 2000 miles from home. On that occasion, I went to the ER quite late at night (after I decided the fall was more than a bruise). The ER folks X-rayed me. Announced my elbow was NOT broken (proven incorrect 2 weeks later back at home; it was broken).

And gave me a scrip for 14 Vicodin tablets.

I guess I don’t fit the mental profile of an abuser, being a female in her late 40s, but here was an ER doc giving me - a total stranger - NARCOTICS. For an injury that wasn’t honestly all that bad (they thought). I’d sure have been suspicious of this if I were a doc!

As the elbow pain was mostly tolerable with large doses of Advil, I thought about not even getting it filled. Typo Knig persuaded me I should, as my restless legs syndrome was kicking in (hah) from the stress, and narcotics are quite effective with that.

So next day, we visited a pharmacy. I asked for just 5 tablets of the 14-tab scrip. The PHARMACIST urged me to get all 14. Wouldn’t really cost more than the 5, why not get 'em all? :smack:. I wound up getting the full scrip filled, used I think 4 of them (at bedtime over the next 4 days), and for all I know they’re still in the closet somewhere.

Honestly, I wonder if it isn’t just some random thing where a doc will give or withhold based on some arcane algorithm I’ll never understand.

[snailboy]

@Hirka_T_Bawa

For some people opiates really won’t do anything. All opiates do the same exact thing in the body, and most opiates are converted to the same thing. If you don’t have the enzyme, or enough of it, that converts something like Codeine to Morphine, it won’t do a damn thing for you. I don’t remember exactly how much of the population doesn’t have the enzyme, but it is somewhere around 5%. So there are plenty of people such drugs as Codeine, Hydrocodeine, or Oxycodiene won’t do a damn thing… There are also people who have altered opiate binding sites in their CNS so no opiate will do a thing to them, even Morphine won’t work.

This isn’t totally accurate. Opioids don’t all do the same thing. There are different opioid receptors in the body such as mu-opioid receptors and kappa-opioid receptors. There’s an opioid sold in some anti-diarrhea medicines (I think it’s loperamide) that stops peristalsis but will not get you high. In fact, most of the natural opiates (the ones found in opium) such as papaverine won’t get you high.

Also, you’re right about some people not having the enzyme that converts codeine to morphine, CYP2D6. I don’t remember the percentage myself, but it’s more common among people of European descent. Some people have double that gene, which makes codeine work a lot better for them. (Perhaps Qadgop has it.) That’s not true for hydrocodone and oxycodone though. They’re not prodrugs like codeine. They work as they are. And they’re not metabolized into the same thing. Neither of those two are metabolized into morphine like codeine and heroin. Also, there are two main enzymes that metabolize opioids and each one metabolizes it into something different. For instance, codeine (methylmorphine) and heroin (diacetylmorphine) are metabolized into morphine by different enzymes. The one that metabolizes codeine into morphine metabolizes heroin into 6-monoacetylmorphine.

I’ve read a ridiculous amount of information about opioids. Most of the above is going by memory, so there may be an inaccuracy or two.

[Hirka_T_Bawa]

@snailboy

This isn’t totally accurate. Opioids don’t all do the same thing. There are different opioid receptors in the body such as mu-opioid receptors and kappa-opioid receptors. There’s an opioid sold in some anti-diarrhea medicines (I think it’s loperamide) that stops peristalsis but will not get you high.

It is Loperamide, otherwise known as Imodium. But the real reason it won’t get someone high is because it can not cross the Blood Brain Barrier in order to get into your CNS.

Thanks for also pointing out my errors, thats what I get for posting right after waking up, when I should have been studying. I knew Hydrocodone and Oxycodone are not prodrugs, but I didn’t make that very clear in the post. I’ll also admit I don’t know too much about the actual Mechanism of Action for those two drugs, since I haven’t had that class yet.