Oxycontin dosing

[Guest guest]

,

I think you have the dosing information incorrect for Oxycontin.

A 20mg OxyContin tablet is the total amount of oxycodone in the

pill. a 20 mg pill is releasing 20 mg over 24 hour period which is

about 1mg / hour (20mg divided by 24 hours). If you take two

20mg pills then you are getting ~2mg / hour (1 mg being

released by each 20mg pill). It is not releasing 20 mg an hour. If

that were so, you would be getting 480 mgs of oxycodone a day!

and a 100 mg pill would be giving you 2400 mg a day! This just

cannot be compatible with life. If you take 5 mg pf oxycodone

every 6 hours it comes out to the same: approximately 1 mg /

hour. So if you take 4 5mg oxycodones a day you are getting a

total of 20mg a day (0.83mg / hour times 24 = 20mg / day).

Basically oxycontin is just oxycodone in a formulation that

releases the meds over a longer period. No different from the

tylenol that you can buy that you take once every 4 hours vs what

you take every 12 hours. The same active ingrediant but different

binders / filliers.(I am not saying that oxycodone is the same as

tylenol...just the concept of IR vs long acting). All you are doing is

reducing the number of times that you need to take the pill. With

oxycodone...it is thought that having a steady concentration in the

body gives a person better pain control, less likelihood of

becoming tolerant to the meds and reduces the peaks and

valleys that you get in pain spikes when you are on the short

acting version (oxycodone). As far as addiction...it is current

thought that when I person is taking the meds correctly for pain

control that the chance for addiction is very low, less than 10%. It

is when people start abusing the drug (like crushing up the

OxyContin so it releases the whole dose at one time instead of

in increments like it is suppose to do) that addiction can take

place. I think you are confusing the term addiction with

dependence. Dependence is the physical changes that take

place whenever a person takes a medicine. Like being

dependent on insulin, or high blood pressure pills, etc.

OxyContin has been used by abusers because of the ability to

release the whole dose if they crush up the pill.. If they crush up

a whole 100mg pill they can get the entire100mg of oxycodone at

one time instead of having a portion of it released every hour. Or

if they crush up the 20mg pill they would get the whole 20mg at

one time instead of over the 24 hour period that it is intended for.

Basically the binders in the pill are formulated so that they are

digested at different times in our guts. Some get absorbed in the

stomach, some in the duodenum, some in the intestine. They

have different coatings to that it takes longer for the drug to get

released into the blood stream. That is the difference between

oxyContin and oxycodone. Oxycodone is just the straight drug -

no " coating " so it is all absorbed all at once (takes about an hour

in the average person with peaks later). When a person crushes

up the OxyContin, the coating is disrupted and the drug is

exposed to absorption at virtually the same rate. This is why it is

so desireable to the addicts....they can get a bigger high from a

smaller pill. To get the same dose using straight oxycodone they

would need to take 20 5mg pills all at once. You can see why it is

more desireable to swallow one crushed 100mg pill instead of

20 5mg pills.........

Check out what I am saying and I think you will find that I am

correct. A 20 mg OxyContin IS the same as taking 5mg

oxycodone every 6 hours (4 a day) because 4 times 5 mg =

20mg. The ONLY difference is that the oxycodone has peaks

and valleys during the day and the oxyContin doesn't if taken

correctly. The dosage designation on the prescription indicates

the total amount of drug in each pill. If your example is correct,

then the labeling should indicate that that 20mg pill is actually

480mg / pill which just isn't so.

Laurie