EL PASO — Charlie vividly remembers tearing through his girlfriend’s medicine cabinet for what felt like hours, peering at bottles of Aspirin and Tylenol, looking for his next fix.
“I just remember being like, screw that,” he said. “None of this stuff is going to work.” Charlie, a college student who prefers not to give his last name, was spending the day at his girlfriend’s house, when he felt the need to get high. He tore her bathroom searching for the latest trend in the world of recreational drug use — Hydrocodone, also known by their commercial names Vicodin or Lortab. “I think I took like, a bunch of Tylenol,” he remembers. “I just felt really stupid doing it.”
Hydrocodone or dihydrocodeinone, a semi-synthetic opiate derived from naturally-occurring codeine and thebaine, is usually administered as an analgesic for patients recovering from painful injuries and after surgery. Lately though, along with other pain relievers and tranquilizers such as Xanax and Oxycontin, Hydrocodone, or Vicodin has taken center stage as the new vogue-drug among teenagers, college students and professional adults, according to a recent Texas report on prescription drug abuse.
According to the report written by Jane Carlisle Maxwell, PhD a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, entitled Trends in the Abuse of Prescription Drugs, prescription drugs are easy to obtain, especially from family or friends, and they are viewed as “legal,” less shameful to use, and safer than illegal drugs which are more likely to be purchased from street dealers.
“Addiction is addiction regardless of whether the drug being taken is legal or not,” says Maria Luisa-Hernandez, counselor for the Student Counseling Center at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). “I think there is a greater deal of deniability, however, with prescription medication because it is considered legal (with a prescription).” Hernandez warns of the psychological side effects of addiction, being sometimes greater than physical dependency — including lowered self-esteem, depression and chronic mood swings too name a few.
The drug is now listed as a schedule III narcotic, making it illegal to own in bulk by prescription, or any at all without one. As recently as of 2008, the College on Drug Dependence stated that non-medical use and abuse of prescription opioids are on the rise in the United States.
The Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner issued a report in 2007, claiming that the drug has been linked to 388 prescription drug-related deaths near our nation’s capital. Of the 87 deaths in Texas, however, all but three of them have been linked to Hydrocodone and Oxycodone.
Charles’ story is as personal as many others who have struggled with the drug’s addictive downside. He began abusing the drug Vicodin and Lortab after discovering its euphoric effects on the body while recovering from a sports injury.
“I first started taking one every four hours like the bottle said,” he recalls. “After a while, I liked the feeling (of getting high) so much, so I began using more them frequently. After a while, I would panic when I ran out. I kept filling my prescription until my doctor cut me off. I asked around and it turned out that everyone pretty much had it, so I began buying it [illegally].”
Street terms such as “Painks”, “Tranks”, “357 Magnums” (derived from the drug code M357 on Hydrocodone pills) and “Pops” have all become a routine language for Charles and many others like him who continue to “eat pills” on a daily basis.
Users from all over the nation have reported mixing the drugs in a variety of ways, such as crushing them into drinks for a compound narcotic known as “lean” on the streets; a mixture of the Codeine substance found in NyQuil, Hydrocodone, soda and alcohol. Many have also reported snorting it in cocaine, known as “speedballing”, or “popping” them before smoking marijuana so as to increase the level of their high.
The drug is acquired in many ways, however. According to a report by the National Drug Intelligence center, the methodology to obtain these drugs varies from person to person dealership to internet purchases. The number of internet sites servicing clients looking to get a hold of schedule II and III narcotics such as Vicodin and Oxycontin has risen 70 percent, from 342 sites in 2006 to 581 sites in 2007. In most cases, these sites will link the consumer to pharmacies overseas, where the sale of most drugs is offered without prescription. As for carriers bringing the drug across the border, the situation is trickier says Ramiro Cordero, public information officer for the El Paso Border Patrol.
“The level of difficulty is dependent on what methodology they use in order to conceal the narcotics. When K-9’s are utilized, these are trained to detect the properties of all narcotics,” Cordero said. “These methods range from stashing the substance on ones person or in their vehicle.”
While the common conception of Mexican pharmacies will have most people believing that drugs fly off the counter without a prescription, of the six pharmacies visited, not one of them sold any of the narcotics in question. However, seizures of the analgesics have been known to happen. “It doesn’t occur as often as many other narcotics like cocaine and heroin, but it does happen.”
For Charles, he took the pill often straight with alcohol. For him, Vicodin was the only drug he’s ever experimented heavily with. When asked if he ever feared the consequences of overdose, he explained that those thoughts become irrelevant when you’re high. “You just really don’t think of those things, you know?” he said.
As dangerous and addictive as the drug is, the withdrawal symptoms have been said to be deadly. Ranging from physical problems such as fatigue, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, the drug also has shown adverse affects on mental facilities, causing insomnia and severe depression.
“It’s scary, really. It’s like, the person you’ve loved so much for so long stops being that person,” said one student at UTEP, whose boyfriend had been addicted to the pain killers Vicodin and Oxycontin for a year. She has had to struggle just as much as he did, she said. “I stood by him for so long because I loved him, but it was very hard.”
The statistics show that the current use trend of the drug is on the rise. A national survey released by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research has noted that the number of Vicodin, Lortab and Lorcet users has risen by .3 percent between 2004 and 2005, while a Percocet and Oxycontin usage has risen by .1 percent.
As for Charles and the UTEP student and many like them, the pill has taken on a life of its own, no longer existing as “just a pill.”
“It scares me,” Charles said. “I just don’t want to go through withdrawal.”
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Borderzine’s sponsor, The Good Drugs Guide, recommends the following sites for further information on the topic:
