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Hydrocodone, sold under brands including Lortab and Vicodin, and the stronger oxycodone, most favored as OxyContin and Percocet, are devastating the younger population of Oklahoma, says hawaii Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The opioid painkiller epidemic is leading to your critical overload for facilities offering hydrocodone and OxyContin detox.

According towards the state drug bureau, hydrocodone could be the number one prescribed controlled substance inside the state, and oxycodone is number three, just behind diazepam, (usually referred to as Valium) inside the number two spot.

To get an idea of simply how much hydrocodone and oxycodone is used inside the state, the bureau's spokesman Mark Woodward points out how the state's prescription monitoring database shows 111 million doses of hydrocodone are prescribed each month in Oklahoma, enough for just one dose each day for each person within the state.

Oklahoma consumes all the hydrocodone because the entire state of California, that has 10 x the population, and oxycodone, the active narcotic in OxyContin, is not far behind.

"That's crazy," Woodward told the Oklahoman. "We've seen huge increases inside last 10 years, the amounts of these being filled."

Dr. Charles Shaw, an addiction specialist, told the newspaper he considers the existing use and abuse of prescription painkillers an epidemic. He says pharmaceutical companies market them aggressively, government drug agencies "have dropped the ball" in controlling their use, and physicians who prescribe them get almost no learning working with addiction.

"I kept seeing over and also over and over people of their 20s dependent on OxyContin," Dr. Shaw told the Oklahoman. "Once they took it, they might never get away from it." OC, or oxy because it is known around the street, is the only opiate that might be swallowed, snorted or injected, Dr. Shaw said. "It's just like heroin in pill form. It is worse than heroin."

Many victims of oxycodone and hydrocodone addiction don't start with illicitly obtain drugs, they get addicted taking legitimate prescriptions for pain. OxyContin, a time-release version of oxycodone, is definitely an effective painkiller, lasting up to 12 hours. But all narcotics open the entranceway to physical dependence and addiction to the person who uses them, even as prescribed. And OxyContin is specially addictive. In fact, the company which makes it, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, was fined $630 million last year for neglecting to disclose to physicians along with the FDA exactly how incredibly addictive it really is.

OxyContin is especially favored by addicts, including former heroin addicts, simply because they can crush the tablets to defeat the time-release mechanism, then snort or inject the crushed powder to get a massive, heroin-like high. Following a few of the experiences, almost no one can escape dependence or addiction.

When someone becomes dependent or dependent on opioid painkillers, they has to be weaned off of these slowly to prevent painful withdrawal symptoms. But most addicts discover the weaning-off process too hard to acquire through. Reversion to drugs is common.

Most drug detox programs are 'one-size-fits-all', basically ignoring all but the most obvious personal needs of patients. In many cases, patients are only told to go home and told to taper off, that is comparable to telling a binge eater or perhaps an alcoholic to "just say no." The 'cold turkey' approach is nearly as impossible. Patients are in other words in a room and asked to "tough it out." Neither way is successful, for all those but a very, very few.

Successful alternative drug detox programs are available, however, called 'medical drug detox' programs. These provide 24/7 medical supervision and assistance, and are personally tailored to each patient's unique metabolism and current health requirements.

Medical drug detox programs avoid the worst from the withdrawal symptoms, are much faster plus more thorough than the cookie-cutter variety, and so are routinely successful for almost any person addicted to prescription drugs like narcotic painkillers or benzodiazepines, or to alcohol. And medical drug detox programs are particularly successful for folks experiencing OxyContin addiction, often taking only a week or less.

In an industry almost devoid of the promise of recovery, medical drug detox offers new hope.