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Sounds Like: OX.ee.KOE.done
Classification: Opioid
Controlled Substance Act Schedule: Schedule II
Other names for Oxycodone
Oxycodone is known to bring severe withdrawal symptoms. This is due to it being notoriously easy for dependence to develop among users. If patients take the drug regularly for a prolonged period, physicians maintain that it has to be reduced gradually to mitigate withdrawal symptoms. Oxycodone withdrawal presents as anxiety, fevers, flu-like symptoms, insomnia, muscle pain, muscle weakness, nausea and panic attacks. Prolonged exposure also causes hypogonadism, which is the lowering of one’s sex hormone levels.
Oxycodone is America’s opioid of choice for recreational use. More than 12 million people use opioids recreationally in the U.S., and the Department of Health and Human Services estimates about 11 million of them consume specifically Oxcodone. In 2007, oxycodone was responsible for about 42,800 emergency room visits due to episodes of various sorts. The next year, recreational use for both Oxycodone and Hydrocodone was tied to about 14,800 deaths.
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The purpose of the drug is to manage moderate to severe pain, whether acute or chronic. It’s particularly tapped by physicians whose patients’ other treatments are insufficient. Research on whether or not the drug successfully improves quality of life when it comes to pain management for chronic pain is inconclusive.
Oxycodone is administered orally. It can be taken as a pill in the traditional sense, but it can also be placed under the tongue. Other conventional methods include injection directly into a muscle, injection into a blood vessel, entry under the skin or rectal insertion.
Allowing shorter and shorter intervals of time to elapse between uses
The need to take doses either before or after every meal (or both)
Prioritizing use of the drug over spending time with family or friends
Overdosing more than once
The International Narcotics Control Board estimates that the world produced about 11.5 short tons of Oxycodone in 1998.
In 2019, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed suit against the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma over internal affairs reports that confirmed that the company deliberately proliferated Oxycodone knowing its propensity for addiction would drive sales. This is considered to place the blame for a large portion of what instigated the opioid crisis in the U.S. on them.
Reformulated OxyContin is leading some recreational users to heroin according to a study published in The Pharmaceutical Journal.