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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Patients would no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night to take their pills, Purdue told doctors. One OxyContin tablet in the morning and one before bed would provide "smooth and sustained pain control all day and all night."
When Purdue unveiled OxyContin in 1996, it touted 12-hour duration.
On the strength of that promise, OxyContin became America's bestselling painkiller, and Purdue reaped $31 billion in revenue.
But OxyContin's stunning success masked a fundamental problem: The drug wears off hours early in many people, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. OxyContin is a chemical cousin of heroin, and when it doesn't last, patients can experience excruciating symptoms of withdrawal, including an intense craving for the drug.
The problem offers new insight into why so many people have become addicted to OxyContin, one of the most abused pharmaceuticals in U.S. history.
Over the last 20 years, more than 7 million Americans have abused OxyContin, according to the federal government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The drug is widely blamed for setting off the nation's prescription opioid epidemic, which has claimed more than 190,000 lives from overdoses involving OxyContin and other painkillers since 1999.
The internal Purdue documents reviewed by The Times come from court cases and government investigations and include many records sealed by the courts. They span three decades, from the conception of OxyContin in the mid-1980s to 2011, and include emails, memos, meeting minutes and sales reports, as well as sworn testimony by executives, sales reps and other employees.
The documents provide a detailed picture of the development and marketing of OxyContin, how Purdue executives responded to complaints that its effects wear off early, and their fears about the financial impact of any departure from 12-hour dosing.
Reporters also examined Food and Drug Administration records, Patent Office files and medical journal articles, and interviewed experts in pain treatment, addiction medicine and pharmacology.
Experts said that when there are gaps in the effect of a narcotic like OxyContin, patients can suffer body aches, nausea, anxiety and other symptoms of withdrawal. When the agony is relieved by the next dose, it creates a cycle of pain and euphoria that fosters addiction, they said.
OxyContin taken at 12-hour intervals could be "the perfect recipe for addiction," said Theodore J. Cicero, a neuropharmacologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a leading researcher on how opioids affect the brain.
Patients in whom the drug doesn't last 12 hours can suffer both a return of their underlying pain and "the beginning stages of acute withdrawal," Cicero said. "That becomes a very powerful motivator for people to take more drugs."
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 22 2017, @10:01PM
My arthritis specialist had me try Tramadol in 2010. And he said to take it every day. I quickly realized it didn't like it. I quit taking it because:
* I didn't like the side effects (jittery, causes restless leg, and even one time an auditory hallucination)
* I couldn't easily stop and start taking it at will -- because it has withdrawal symptoms that I liked even less
* I found it to be way too addictive for me
So I quit taking it completely. I hated it. I had already been taking hydrocodone, occasionally, as needed, for years, and still do to this day. I could sometimes even take quite a bit if needed. But I never had any bad side effects. No withdrawal -- that I am aware of. As far as I know, I don't have a tolerance, because I just don't take it very often. I like to start with 1/2 tablet and work up from there. I can stop it, and start it as I please, unlike Tramadol.
When my primary care doctor asked what the auditory hallucination was like, I told her that in the middle of the night I could hear what sounded like voices outside my house talking. She asked what did they say? They didn't say anything intelligible. When I would listen to hear, there was nothing. When I would stop listening for it, and think about something else, I could hear a low background sound of voices again, but nothing intelligible. And again, when I would listen more closely -- nothing. That was definitely when I quit taking Tramadol after about four months in 2010.
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