Pain is one of medicine’s real four letter words.

The CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, June 18, 2010, shows some alarming data.

• Non-medical use of RX pain-killers more than doubled between 2004-2008 as measured by visits to ERs.
• Non-medical use of both RX and over-the-counter medications now bring  as many patients into ERs as do illegal drugs. This is not the first study to call attention to medicine cabinet drug abuse but it defines the scale of the problem nation-wide.
• Using a medication, prescription or purchased, for a recreational purpose is called “diversion.”
• The CDC says “stronger measures to reduce diversion of prescription drugs to nonmedical purposes are warranted.”
• If you need pain medication after surgery or a hospitalization, get your doctor’s advice or a nurse’s help in identifying a pharmacy which will fill your prescription. If there is a pharmacy near your doctor’s office, the pharmacist knows your doctor, knows the doctor’s prescribing patterns and can easily call to verify that this is a legitimate prescription if the druggist has concerns.

Many pharmacies do not want to stock painkillers because of break-ins or worse.

Five years ago, it took me hours to get an Oxycodone prescription filled for my best friend after foot surgery. She should have had her first dose 45 minutes after she got home. She got it three wretchedly uncomfortable hours later.

Our own drug store did not stock it. Neither did the chain drugstore, open 24 hours, at Washington’s Dupont Circle. I worked my way up Connecticut Avenue, stopping at every drugstore and looking as responsible and respectable as I knew how.

One clerk took pity on me.

He gestured to me to come closer. “Go to the suburbs,” he whispered. Whispered.

The suburbs did not fail us. Finally, prescription in hand, I got it to the patient,  now in a fair bit of pain. Her surgeon should have warned us that this would be hard to fill. We could have done it there, where he could have vouched for us, that we were not really diverters-in-disguise.

For the innocent, plan ahead if you need pain medication. Speak to your doctor or surgeon about helping you get the prescription filled properly, sparing you trips to many stores until you can find any willing pharmacist who will do it.

You will be caught up in the effort to reverse this trend, but this is a trend which must be reversed.

Medpage Today

“The number of emergency room visits for nonmedical use of prescription painkillers more than doubled between 2004 and 2008, according to a CDC estimate.

“The increase was part of a trend that saw emergency room visits for nonmedical use of all prescription and over-the-counter medications reach the same level as those for abuse of illicit drugs, the agency said in the June 18 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“One implication of the findings, the agency said, is that “stronger measures to reduce the diversion of prescription drugs to nonmedical purposes are warranted.”

Source: Medpage Today, June 17, 2010

Citation:Primary source: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,MMWR 2010; 59: 705-09.