Opioid Myth Busters
Dr. Robert Valuck shared ‘Opioid Myth Busters’ during the ‘Addressing the Opioid Crisis Together’ gathering Thursday at the Garden Park Building, which was hosted by Solvista Health.
He said the notion that we can get people’s pain to zero with a medicine is false.
“It can’t be done,” Valuck said. “There is no medicine that removes pain. We have pain modifiers, pain reducers, pain modulators, but none of them produces zero pain.”
He said the very best medication reduces pain by about by 50-55 percent, and opioids reduce it by about 33 percent. People tend to think that the more they take, the less pain they will feel, but it doesn’t work that way.
“The maximum effect is a 30-percent pain reduction on a 10-point scale from opioids or anything in that class, no matter the dose,” Valuck said. “Double the dose, all you get is double the side effects.”
He said the only way to remove pain completely is to remove its source, adding that pain can only be managed and reduced.
Valuck said DEA’s scheduling system of controlled substances has nothing to do with potency of pain relief.
“The DEA schedules things based on their ability to be diverted, for you to become addicted, and to overdoes and die,” he said. “Schedule II drugs are scheduled that way because of their ability to harm you, not because they’re better at helping you.”
He said non-scheduled medications are better and they won’t have the same potential to kill a person.
Another myth he addressed is that the U.S. is No. 1 for treating pain. The truth is, the U.S. is No. 1 in prescribing opioids, he said.
“Over 95 percent of the world’s Oxycodone is prescribed and consumed in the United States,” he said.
During the event, Valuck also talked about opioid-sparing protocols for surgeries, alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofin, and how six percent of people taking an opioid for any purpose wind up still taking it a year later.
Additionally, combing a benzodiazepine and an opioid can be deadly.
“It’s not OK to take one of these and one of those if you’re not under the care of a doc and being well monitored for that,” Valuck said.
He said 87 percent of the problem starts with leftover prescribed opioids in medication cabinets. He said those medications should be used minimally and safely discarded.
The Cañon City Police Department has a secured discard box at 161 Justice Center Road.
As for treatment, Valuck said it takes 180 days to rewire brain, and that rehabilitation or treatment should be accompanied with therapy and other social supports.
(Valuck is a professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Epidemiology and Family Medicine at University of Colorado Schools of Pharmacy, Public Health and Medicine. He also is the director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research at the School of Pharmacy.)
If you go
What: Community awareness event on addiction and the national opioid crisis
When: 5-7:30 p.m. April 11
Where: Cañon City High School Auditorium, 1313 College Ave.
Cost: Free
More info: “Written Off: The Journals will Explain Everything” includes a video documentary and expert panel discussion on the science and struggle of addiction. There also will be a free pizza dinner; child care will be provided. For more information, call Christina Taylor at the Fremont County Public Health Department at 719-276-7458.
Thanks to two quick-acting police officers and three doses of the life-saving Narcan, Pat Cox’s daughter is planning for her future.
Cox and his family were moments away from having to plan for his daughter’s funeral when her life was saved during a heroin overdose last year.
Cox, the chairperson for the Treatment and Recovery Action Team on the Region 13 Opioid Coalition and the manager of the Fremont County Sobering Center, shared this story and about his own addiction to Oxycontin during the ‘Addressing the Opioid Crisis Together’ gathering Thursday at the Garden Park Building, which was hosted by Solvista Health.
More than 100 people attended the event that featured local, regional and statewide officials and experts on opioids and addiction.
Cox said after he underwent surgery on his neck 30 years ago, he became addicted to Oxycontin.
“It progressed to where everything I did revolve around it,” he said.
He was introduced to Suboxone while he was in treatment for his addiction.
“In my experience, it was a godsend,” he said. “It took away the pain of withdrawal enough that I could participate in the treatment and hear the cognitive training that the counselors were presenting. Without it, I would not have been able to participate.”
He said Suboxone is the medication used for “those of us lucky enough to live through it and to have an opportunity to get help.”
“All too many of us don’t live long enough to get the help they need,” he said.
Cox’s daughter was 23 when she nearly died from an overdose.
She had battled a substance abuse disorder since she was 16. She was admitted into nine 30-day treatment programs, some of which she didn’t complete.
She began to spiral out of control when she started to mix alcohol with narcotics. As her drug use progressed, she started to use meth and eventually heroin.
Thankfully, someone called the police when she overdosed in September. When law enforcement arrived, she was the only one in the room, and she was the color of “a good pair of Levis,” Cox said.
“The police grabbed her, one of them put her in the shower to hopefully wake her up while his partner got the Narcan,” he said. “They came back and gave her a dose of Narcan with no response.”
She was given a second dose and eventually a third.
“Because of that, we were able to put her into a 90-day treatment program instead of a casket,” Cox said. “I am happy to say that she is doing fantastic – she has remained clean and sober since that night.”
She also is employed, living in a sober living house in Denver.
“We are forever thankful and grateful that the first responders had Narcan,” Cox said. “As a result of that, I carry it now.”
He said it’s not something that people need to be ashamed of and not talk about.
According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, from 2013-2017, there were 12 prescription opioid-related overdose deaths in Fremont County.
In 2017 alone, 1,012 Coloradans died due to drug overdose, and 57 percent of those deaths involved an opioid.
Narcan is available to the public at no charge at the Fremont County Department of Public Health and Environment.
Cox’s message for people who may be resistant to Narcan, is “whatever it takes until they are ready to get help.”
“In our case it took longer than we wanted it to, but by the grace of God and the availability of this medication, my daughter is alive and well.”
Carie Canterbury: 719-276-7643, canterburyc@canoncitydailyrecord.com
