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Comment by CommitSyn | Hacker News Reader

4 out of 5 pharmacy-filled prescriptions are opioids.¹

In almost every single case, those using these drugs are trying to escape the physical and/or emotional pain. They didn't wake up one day and say "I want to have fun, I'm going to do heroin"

Almost every fentanyl user I've talked to in harm reduction work started out on prescribed painkillers. Whether they got the taste and moved up quick, or just couldn't get their fix and couldn't deal with the horrible weeks of withdrawal and found a place to get it, they didn't just up and start shooting fentanyl one day.

1: https://drugabusestatistics.org/prescription-drug-abuse-stat...

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There are also a ton of people who think they're buying real pills with much weaker opioids in them that are actually just fentanyl. It's a tragedy because it can kill first time users and those who assume they're much weaker than they truly are.

4 out of 5 pharmacy-filled prescriptions is not 4 out of 5 prescriptions, let alone 4 out of 5 patients, nor does that statistic say anything about unfilled pharmacy prescriptions or the rate at which people did not develop an addiction. Also you would expect the proportion of pharmacy-filled prescriptions for opioids to go up if the more common prescription for pain is not opiods from a pharmacy.

> 4 out of 5 pharmacy-filled prescriptions is not 4 out of 5 prescriptions

As opposed to the non-pharmacy filled prescriptions people pick up?

Your argument is that the statistic only works because so many people don't pick up meds their doctor calls in for them?

I'm not a statistician so maybe I'm not understanding correctly, but that seems like a very weak argument.

While 4/5 is shocking any way you look at it, the stronger argument for why this stat is misleading is because it does not take into account how long the prescription lasts. Anecdotally, I was given basically a week's worth after all 3 of my surgeries. Tough to find stats on these things but I could see opiod prescriptions being 2x the number of prescriptions because the number of "doses" are half what other non-addictive substances are. Still, that would make opiods 2/3 of pharmacy-filled "doses".

Yes, lots of opiod prescriptions for like 4-7 days, but there's got to be more for chronic treatment when you factor in thewy might be 30-90 days between refills.

While that is a good point, there are many other frequently prescribed drugs with shorter rx periods - antibiotics, benzodiazipines, sleep medication, emergency medications like inhalers and Epi pens to name a few. If you look at the list of most commonly prescribed drugs¹, opioids aren't even in the top 15, which makes that statistic even more concerning, albeit obvious in hindsight.

1: https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Top300Drugs.aspx

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