Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Heroin Epidemic.

that is pretty much bullchit.

Correctamundo!!! This is absolutely true.

An incredible number of Americans have become habitual opioid users in the past 20-25 years. Most of them got hooked on Rx meds. Remember Brett Favre's Vicodin abuse issue? That was in 1995.

Docs used to prescribe narcotic pain meds like candy. They were in part driven to it by activists who wanted hospitals and doctors to be punished for failing to "adequately address pain", and their lawyers, who successfully sued docs who tried to limit or prohibit patient narcotic use. By Y2K, unless you had balls of steel, no clinic doc could avoid having to write way more opioid Rx's than s/he really wanted to.

So more and more people have got used to having a bottle of Percocet or Vicodin in the medicine chest "just in case". Kids got in the habit of stealing a couple of oxy's on a Friday night to get "high" with their pals... grind 'em up and snort 'em, usually, but some would inject subcutaneously ("skin-popping") or intravenously. Most were recreational, but some became addicts. And as Pat says, most folks didn't get all that upset bout it, because "it's just a pill". My ex's 25-year-old son was a habitual hydrocodone abuser--he was not addicted so far as I know, but would pop a couple on weekends for kicks when he went out clubbing with his buddies--and my ex thought it wasn't a big deal. Even when I told her that a bottle of hydrocodone I kept in my medical bag had gone missing during one of her son's visits.

Then the DEA moved oxycodone and then hydrocodone to the Schedule II list, which meant that doctors had to meet a much higher standard to prescribe those meds. And as a result, the street supply of those drugs dried up, and prices went through the roof. Street price for a 10 mg tablet of oxycodone (Percocet) was about 15 bucks 5 years ago, but now it's more than $50.

So people who are already habituated to narcotics are migrating to heroin. What a surprise.

Doc, do you think some have a propensity to want to feel dead/numb in there heads on the opiates?

Another tip is too never treat to the point there is no pain, once you reach the feeling good/euphoria level it's over. They are to make pain bearable not turn you into a slobbering idiot.

Mike

That was exactly the reason for my above question to Doc, I got busted up really bad a few decades ago and was home healing after a spinal fusion surgery, they gave me some dosage of oxy something.

I was at the point of slobbering down my shirt sitting in a chair and starring out a window all day, I called the nurse and told her so, she laughed and said for me to break the tablets in half and take as needed, I still can't imagine how someone could get hooked on that feeling, or in any case like, and want to be there.

I've heard this is a stepping stone to heroin. People get hooked on prescription pain meds, doc quits prescribing and they resort to heroin because it is cheap and easy to get.

Back in the 5th grade I had a teacher say that she never tried any 'drugs' because she was afraid she would like them. I took that advice to heart and have lived the same motto. Darn glad I have......some of that stuff must be incredible - just look what people will do to get more....

That's because of the war on drugs.

+1

I guess so, but I don't know. Nobody knows except the people who get hooked; they must get more of a euphoria from the meds than I do, because any time I've taken opioids I have quickly developed a distinct sensation of dysphoria... the opposite of euphoria. I feel tired, wasted, cranky, and nauseous. After both of my knee replacements I was off the narcs as fast as I could, and damn the pain.

But there seems to be a great number of Americans who want to avoid any bad feeling at any cost. They refuse to eat a sensible diet, refuse to exercise, refuse to work, refuse all the things that make life worth living in my book. I think that's at the root of the problem.

Well, that's the hard part, isn't it? Since pain is subjective, the prescribing physician has nothing to measure the effectiveness or suitability of the treatment except the patient's report of pain and pain relief.

Prescription drug addicts always complain of terrible pain. Differentiating between real pain, psychological disturbance, and addictive behaviors is a nightmare.

It isn't just Jose and Eduardo.

I just read a story a week ago about the heroin epidemic in West Virgina. Home-grown American hillbillies are hooked on heroin in record numbers, and they are dying like flies.

Said they get started on Percocet or Ocycontin, possibly following bone surgery, they get hooked, then they switch over to heroin because it is cheaper and stronger.
It is a suicide trip all the way and I am fresh out of sympathy for junkies. Like Prince.
No word of Prince using the needle but he was on Percocet and Fentanyl, just synthetic heroin.

Prince got what he deserved.

You can't use Fentanyl without a needle.

They found Fentanyl and something else in the opiods he was taking. Their deduction was these were street drugs. Again, I wouldn't know this stuff or even what to with it. And as for giving myself a shot over and over. HA!! NO WAY! And these people doing bath salts and smoking fake pot---IDIOTS! Do they eat the bath salts?

(CNN)They might as well be playing Russian Roulette.
It doesn't matter if you're talking about a teenager chasing a higher high or a mega star trying to soothe chronic pain. The counterfeit pills they may be reaching for are more deadly than ever, experts say.
Why? One word: fentanyl.

"Synthetic fentanyl showing up in the street drug supply is an enormous game changer," says Carol Falkowski, CEO of Drug Abuse Dialogues, a group that helps track drug trends for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "It means anybody who purchases illegal drugs can unknowingly be taking fentanyl, which is 100 times stronger than morphine."

All it takes is a dose of fentanyl the size of three grains of sand to kill.

Fentanyl powder is cheap and easy to obtain on the dark web, experts warn, making it attractive to those manufacturing it into pill form mixed with other drugs.
Those counterfeit drugs are sold on the street, and usually dangerously usually labeled as something less potent. Even forensic scientists can't tell whether some of the pills sold on the street are counterfeit or not just by looking at them. That's how good the counterfeiters have gotten at making the illicit drugs.

Those who take fake prescriptions likely have no idea if fentanyl is inside, or how much.

"They should be known as a kill pill," Falkowski says.
Prince Rogers Nelson's death may turn out to be the most famous example of the dangers posed by counterfeit fentanyl. Pills found in his Minnesota home were reportedly marked as hydrocodone, but when tested the pills turned out to have fentanyl in them. No one has said if Prince took those pills. But he did die of fentanyl toxicity, according to the autopsy report.

Fentanyl is an opioid. Its effect on the body is exactly like heroin, or any other opiate-based medication. But fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin, up to 100 times stronger than morphine. It is stronger than any prescription painkiller on the market.

"All opiates are just oral heroin. There is no difference to the body," Minneapolis emergency medicine physician Chris Johnson says.

Doc! You can get a Fentanyl patch.

Just get you some Blu Emu....and you won't stank!

Maybe a Goodys!

I think there is probably a lot of difference in the reaction to opioids in different people just as there is to almost everything based on genetic makeup. The closest analogy is alcohol. Some people become addicts, some become occasional users and some become ill. Different genetic groups seem to have higher or lower percentages of each type.

My only experience with painkillers came after surgery on a broken wrist. I don't recall the specific narcotic, but I didn't notice any effect other than the desired elimination of the pain. There was no "high" or euphoria so no reason to seek more once the wrist healed and the pain disappeared.

Jerry

Not at its intended purpose, expansion of government

Yeah, but the junkies suck the liquid out of 'em with needles and inject.

I should've qualified my needle comment by saying nobody INTENTIONALLY takes fentanyl except by needle. As an additive/adulterant to other drugs, it can be added to almost any oral medication.

As the article says, it's a potent sumbitch. First-pass liver degradation of orally ingested drug will wipe out at least 50% of the drug, but since the lethal dose is so small, most street "chemists" don't know how to safely reduce their dosages so people will get high instead of getting killed.

It's tragic that people are dying from taking this drug, but after all they ARE knowingly taking illegal opioids.

Doesn't the U.S. Army use "lollipops" made with fentanyl? Something called "Actique"?

it seems like there's an ecology of drug use. we could begin with marijuana, if we have to begin somewheres.

then cocaine is rampant.

then crack cocaine, what ever that is.

amphetamines, glue, that meth stuff, heroin, opium, etc. etc.

synthetic mary jane.

hell, when are those organic chemists going to discover the ultimate, that is a high without consequences? just think of the money to be made with such a product.