Actually Vicoden is hydrocodone and acetaminophen (tylenol). Same with Lortab.
Percocet is oxycodone and acetaminophen. Vicodin and Percocet are instant relief pain meds. Roxicodone is just oxycodone, it's a instant relief too.
The extended relief one is the oxycontin (oxycodone). ER pills are designed to release a little of the medicine initially, then release more over time. They're designed to last about 8 hours. The idea being that you get more of a steady stream of medicine and avoid the "up and down" feelings. Instead of your body getting a big jolt of meds at once and you going "up" and then "down" hard, it's spread out over time. Drug addicts or people looking to abuse the drug, would crush the ER pills, so they would get the entire pills medicine all at once.
Another pain med that is extremely dangerous is Duragesic or Fentanyl, which is a patch that has medicine in it, that slowly releases medicine over the period of about 3 days. Fentanyl is 100 times stronger then morphine, so this stuff is really dangerous. Once again, drug addicts would try to get all of the medicine at once, so they would chew them or suck on them. Well, a lot of people would die from Respiratory Depression, as the pain meds would slow your breathing down to where you would just stop breathing all together. Cool high, huh?
Oxycodone is stronger then hydrocodone.
Once you become opioid tolerate, then it gets hard to come off them. If you take them every day, for long periods of time, then you most certainly will have withdrawals if you stop them. That will be a nightmare, let me tell you. I forgot I was going to run out when I was in Vegas, and I hadn't found a pain dr to get my prescriptions refilled.. well I ran out and it was hell. It got so bad after a few days, I couldn't take it anymore and went to the emergency room is how bad it was. It's a double edged sword, it's the only thing that helps me with my chronic pain and I've tried about every kind of pain meds there are. I tried oxycontin and it didn't work for me, plus there is no generic, so it's expensive as hell. So the IR oxycodone is what works for me. I also took Nuvigil to help with the drowsiness. That's some good stuff, makes you feel alert with no "jittery" feelings like from any other stimulants. But of course, no generic again, so expensive drug.
The stigma of taking pain meds is unbelievable too. Not only are Dr's scared to prescribe it to you, the pharmacy looks at you funny and gives you crap once in awhile and most everyone that finds out you take pain meds, they look at you like a drug addict. Everyone sees all the news reports of people abusing Oxycontin, people dying from Oxycontin, people getting high from Oxycontin... with a steady stream of that every night on the news, if people hear the words pain meds, it brings up a image of a someone getting high.
Another thing that is misunderstood... is that people get high from this stuff. People with actual pain, do not get high from pain meds. I did most every kind of drug there was when I was younger. I know all about getting high. I don't get high on pain meds because my pain is real. Now if you don't have pain, you may well catch a buzz. Well, it's those a**holes who have made it humiliating for us that do need them for pain. The people that crush them to snort it up, or the ones that shoot it up, all the people that abuse pain meds, have made it near impossible for people with real pain to get them anymore. Even with the new oxycontin forumula designed with a new filler, to make the pills stick together and chewy to make it very difficult to crush up, people still find a way to abuse them.
I can't imagine you taking a couple of hydrocodone pills once in a while, to lead to any sort of withdrawals as described in your post.
Bottom line.. if you take opioid pain meds, be careful with them, don't ever run out if you're a long time user or you're in for one helluva bad time:frown: For the public... please stop looking at everyone like they're a drug addict if they take pain meds. Yes, there are many people that abuse pain meds, just like they abuse every other kind of drug, but there also people that legitimately have pain, need to take drugs for their pain, and those people are NOT getting high off of them, they're just trying to get thru each day with some kind of normalcy.
here is a page that has many of the pain meds and a little info on each one
http://www.painclinic.org/aboutpain-medicationtypes.htm
