Devastating

While we think of drug abuse and addiction as modern-day problems, the devastating effects they create never really change. In 1884, a 20-year-old woman from San Francisco was arrested in a Vancouver opium den. Well educated, and from an upper-class family, her opium smoking habit had ruined her life in four short years.

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Welcome to oxycontin addiction faq

Oxycontin is part of the fastest-growing category of abused drugs: prescription medications.

Less than a decade ago, the notion of “drug abuse” encompassing the kinds of drugs that come from a pharmacist was virtually unheard of. Today, cocaine, heroin and crystal meth are losing in a new type of drug war to Oxycontin and its chemical relatives. Strangely enough, Oxycontin and other prescription drugs are becoming easier to obtain (legally and illegally) than their “street drug” counterparts. With a little creative paperwork, these medications can even be conveniently delivered right to your door (in the clichéd “brown paper bag”) from any one of hundreds of online pharmacies.

Oxycontin is the brand name for the chemical compound oxycodone. Other medications containing oxycodone include Percocet and Percodan. While all of these are susceptible to abuse, Oxycontin has become popular because its time-release tablets (intended to give effective pain relief over a 12 hour period) can be crushed and ingested, releasing the full strength of the drug immediately.

Oxycodone-containing drugs are classified as “opioids,” and are extremely effective in relieving severe pain. This classification of drugs, which also includes morphine and codeine, takes its name from opium, a milky white sap extracted from the seedpods of the opium poppy. A widely used (and abused) pain reliever that was a central component of Chinese medicine, opium was introduced to the United States by Chinese immigrants who came to America in the 1800s to work as laborers on the railroads.

While we think of drug abuse and addiction as modern-day problems, the devastating effects they create never really change. In 1884, a 20-year-old woman from San Francisco was arrested in a Vancouver opium den. Well educated, and from an upper-class family, her opium smoking habit had ruined her life in four short years. Canadian authorities asked her why she continued to smoke, to which she replied:

"Because I must; I could not live without it. I smoke mainly to escape from the horrors, which would ensue if I did not smoke. To be twenty-four hours without smoking is to suffer worse tortures than the lost."

Regardless of where drugs come from (a poppy field or a pharmacy), what they look like (a powder, a pill or a paste), in the final analysis, a drug is a drug…and a drug user is a drug user. And sooner or later, most drug users discover that-whatever their drug of choice might be-addiction is addiction.