To Humphreys, the key point in favor of the reformulation — and other interventions that make opioid painkillers harder to misuse — is that they prevent more people from getting addicted to the drugs. After all, if the problem was that painkillers were so accessible that they made it easy for people to start on a path that ends with misusing and overdosing on heroin, then the inverse is true as well: Making opioid painkillers hard to obtain and misuse will stop people from going down a path of addiction.
On one hand, you have the current stock of opioid users who are addicted; the people in this population need treatment or they will simply find other, potentially deadlier opioids to use if they lose access to painkillers or the ability to misuse painkillers.
On the other hand, you have to stop new generations of people from accessing and misusing opioids — or they will get addicted to the drugs and potentially overdose and die. Consider the example given in the study: A person got addicted to opioids by misusing OxyContin, but when the formula for the pill changed, he lost his ability to misuse the drug, so he began using heroin instead.
Part of this example shows the reformulation working as intended: The person was so burdened by the change that he felt the need to shift to heroin. But what if addiction treatment was made very accessible? So when this person hit the roadblock to misusing opioids posed by the reformulation, he could have decided that it was time to get into an addiction treatment program, instead of going to heroin.
Apply that thousands of times over, and the findings of the paper could have been very different. The reality of the US today, though, is that treatment is not accessible enough for this to be realistic. In some states, for instance, waiting periods for treatment can span weeks or even months. Lieber agreed that this is plausible. But he argued that the findings of the paper still provide a lesson on the limitations — and dangerous side effects — of well-meaning interventions.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. When someone abuses oxycodone by insufflation over a long period of time, they may cause permanent damage to their nasal passageway, including inflammation, infection and potential changes to the internal structures of the nose. Another potential danger of snorting oxycodone is that they were designed to be taken orally, not nasally. So the pills themselves may contain contaminants that may not be received well by the nasal membrane.
At times, the casings on the pills may get stuck in the nasal passageway and cause infection. Snorting oxycodone fast tracks the effects of the opioid drug on the central nervous system CNS , resulting in feelings of euphoria. This is especially true of the extended-release version of the drug.
When someone snorts oxycodone, the nasal membrane quickly absorbs the contents of the pill into the bloodstream which causes them to feel high.
It is a common misconception that snorting is the fastest way to achieve this high. In reality, when drugs are snorted they must pass through the nose, to the heart and lungs, then onto the rest of the body.
Whereas when someone smokes the drug, it goes straight to the lungs. The issue with snorting is that the nose is not designed to absorb that many powders, it is designed to filter out particles that should not be in the body. With repeated abuse, the mucous membrane can become worn down and damaged.
When oxycodone is snorted, side effects of the drug can include sudden, a dangerous drop in blood pressure, seizures, slowed breathing, cardiac arrest, and potential death. Some additional effects of oxycodone may include:. After long-term misuse of oxycodone, individuals can experience a dangerously decreased level of testosterone.
Other long-term effects of oxycodone include excessive sweating, swelling in the arms and legs and chronic constipation. One study showed that individuals can suffer from nasopharyngeal necrosis after chronically snorting oxycodone. This condition is associated with severe tissue destruction, causing a defect in the soft palate roof of the mouth. The researchers also were supported by private university funds.
Abuse-deterrent formulations and the prescription opioid abuse epidemic in the United States. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.
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