In what is the biggest “I can’t believe we have to prove this academically” story of the year, three Johns Hopkins researchers showed that 66-92% of people who got a pile of prescription opioids, didn’t use them all. Not only did 67-92% of patients report unused opioids (92!) but up to 71% of opioids obtained even by surgical patients weren’t consumed. This review of 6 different studies drives home the need for much of the mainstream addiction/treatment community to modernize their thinking when it comes to harm reduction and human behavior. Unsurprisingly, 3 out of 4 people didn’t secure their opioids properly (yes, the FDA legitimately believes that people should store pain pills in locked containers). Even more unsurprisingly, no more than 9% of patients in any study “disposed” of their drugs “properly.” What does disposing drugs properly look like? This:
Tag Archives: oxycontin
Do No Harm: Initial Prescription Details Influence Chance of Opiate Dependence
By Terry Gotham
One of the biggest problems with writing about the War on Drugs is the almost exclusive focus on problems. There’s this myth that drug use is a combination between a ratchet & Russian roulette. It’s going to keep getting worse, and it gets harder and harder to “not be addicted” the longer you do it. This continued narrative is believed widely (just ask your family at Easter dinner), while being only lightly supported with evidence. Harm reduction & physician/client education is surprisingly effective at mitigating a lot of the factors that contribute to this “it’s probably going to kill you” problem, but outside of needle exchange/safe injection sites & drinking water while partying, complex harm reduction ideas rarely make it into non-academic circles. So, I’m going to start talking about constructive, modern ideas and research that have been either theorized, published or put into practice, about how to fight this deluge.