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New Opana ER Formulation - I got it :(

rakaur

Greenlighter
Joined
Feb 3, 2011
Messages
35
This is actually my first post here. I've been lurking for years and PMing here and there, but today I finally felt the need to speak up.

First off, I'm a chronic pain patient and I use my meds 99% as prescribed. Once in a very great while I'll have a little fun but that's very rare. I've been on Opana ER for the last yearish and today I got the new formulation. I tried to take a pill splitter to it to see what the inside looked like and it broke it! Then I tried a cheap steak knife, and it broke that too! Then I tried a real knife and it cut, but it was hard. Definitely no crushing either.

I took one this morning and shortly after my stomach started hurting pretty badly. My pain is actually ramping up and I'm starting to notice mild withdrawal symptoms so I'd say this new gummy stuff isn't working out so well in my stomach. It sure is cool that Endo cares more about anti-abuse stuff in the pills than the human body's ability to actually digest the crap.

Has anyone else gotten these? How has it gone for you? I'm really looking for some feedback. I've already been around the world. Fentanyl patches make me sick. Methadone is too uneven. I've never been on OxyContin but their pills are the same crush-resistant crap, so I can't do that. The last time I was on morphine I had 30mg and I had a fecal bowel impaction and spent the night in the ER with some fingers up my ass, so I'm not especially thrilled about trying that again. There really is nothing else in the US. Opana was the only thing left that worked for me, and now it's turning my stomach into knots and not working!

Someone, anyone, help!
 
I had a feeling this was going to happen in this way. Like you I cannot deal with the new Oxycontin because the plastic/rubber or whatever is in it makes me sick. I am running out of pill options also. I cannot take the patch anymore and it looks like Opana is out. I guess I would say to you that it may be time to talk about surgery. Either a spinal cord stim depending on where your pain is or a pain pump. Have you thought about or talked to the doc about those options?
 
A stim isn't an option for my type of pain. A pain pump is viable but I'd really rather not, and I have no idea how my physician would feel about that anyway. It seems to be going over a little better today, but still not great. I'll probably try morphine again and just have to be very proactive about my bowel regimen.
 
My boyfriend has the same issue with the new Opana ER. Tears up his gut. Gotta love the war on drugs.
 
There is a pretty big thread on this already, if you don't mind giving away your general location it might be helpful to others around here who are keeping up with this change over.

Heart goes out to you. I personally think its bullshit that you have to suffer because of "the war". Best of luck to you on finding yet another option that'll probably just end up begin changed over to begin "abuse proof" at the first hint of it begin popular with the 'heads.
 
You should consider trying dilaudid for pain as I see you have not yet. Also, you can get compounded formulations of hydrocodone that are er and contain no APAP. They are also coming out with an er hydro formulation in a year or two.
 
Well, I don't see generic morphine going away. Any abuse-proof formulation would be branded and they're just not going to take a drug as standard and old as morphine off the generic market. Anything else seems to be fair game, but they were all discovered in the last couple centuries. Who knows what the US will let big pharma do.
 
You should consider trying dilaudid for pain as I see you have not yet. Also, you can get compounded formulations of hydrocodone that are er and contain no APAP. They are also coming out with an er hydro formulation in a year or two.

I only listed long-actings. I've been on hydrocodone/APAP, oxycodone/APAP, hydromorphone, etc. I only listed long-actings because I'd never consider replacing my long-actings with lots of short-actings.

Where are there extended release hydrocodone compounds? I have heard about an extended release hydrocodone but it will take at minimum five years before that happens. It's in very early trials.
 
Muvolution was saying that it can be compounded specially by a pharmacy on doctors orders.
 
Has anyone looked into the ER formulations of hydromorphone? Isn't Exalgo still available in the US? Here in Canada we're really lucky, I have been on Hydromorph Contin for the past couple of years and it works great for me.

Some people may want to give good ol' morphine a try with some antihistamines if it only gives them minor side effects if nothing else is left to choose from for a long-acting medication. MS Contin or the likes is actually a pretty good medication. The time release mech is only good old paraben wax (still a hydrocarbon per se, but nothing crazy or totally carcinogenic as far as I know). I think oxycodone is an over-rated medication anyway, it's really not even that strong, it just has a high oral BA. Milligram for milligram morphine is actually more potent when administered parenterally (injected). I know here in the hospitals the first line of heavy narcotic treatment if you need an injection would be IM morphine. Who needs a high BA when you can just titrate up the dose of morphine? I think some people just have it in their head that a high BA makes it work better based on many threads I've read. I would have stayed on my LA morphine if HM Contin wasn't available to me.

I can understand no one wanting to take these hydrocarbon laced tablets, but it's weird, it seems to me the original OxyContin had some ugly chemicals in it as well, yet that never hurt many folk's stomach, or we didn't hear of it at least. (people in this thread I'm not referring to you, please don't take offense) It seemed like when the OPs came out everyone flipped shit and said they didn't work right and they were weak, but it seems to me they still have the same amount of active ingredient. I think some of the patients are allergic to not being able to get around the time release mechanism, haha.
Here in Canada our OxyContin just got dropped on March 1st, it's no longer being produced. Instead Purdue is coming out with OxyNeo (I'm assuming this will be riddled full of lovely chemicals like butylated hydroxytoluene--BHT) which will need doctors to send in to the government for approval before starting therapy unless it is for palliative care or cancer pain. I think the whole deal there is patent control though. Oxycodone really got a bad name in the last 15 years. It seems like everyone thinks it's a new drug, or at least it's portrayed in the media that way; in reality this medicine has been around since something like 1916 or something ridiculous. Hell, Dilaudid wasn't even synthed until 1926.

It would have been nice to have oxymorphone to choose from here as well, but we have long and short acting hydromorphone, so we don't need it. Can anyone shed some light on oxymorphone for me? Would you say if given an equivalent dose would you say it's less sedating than hydromorph as oxycodone is to hydrocodone?

Anyway, best of luck to the real chronic pain patients who relied on Opana and nothing else worked for you, I feel for you all. Hopefully they crank out something tolerable for you guys. I know what it's like to live with terrible pain every day, it's no fun, take care guys.
 
Oxymorphone is much more sedating than HM. It has a very heavy, noddy high, probably 1.5 to 2 times stronger (absolute BA) than hydromorphone.
 
Looks like you said you're on some type of regimen for short-acting meds (BT pain) in addition to your Opana ER. If I were you, I'd switch over to an equivalent dose of Dilaudid ER (I think this is fairly new), and keep the same meds for BT pain. Morphine is always a "classic" but it just sucks unless it's IV'ed


edit: You could also try Tapentadol ER (Nucynta ER); it's a new drug. Some people react very well to it, others think it's absolute shit for pain. I was on the IR version for a month and it got rid of my pain completely, but blurred my vision too much for me to be stick with it.
Nucynta is gonna be really expensive if you don't have insurance though
 
There's still Oxymorphone IR, right?, I know it's not as long lasting, but for me it always lasted a good amount of time. And nothing beats the analgesic effect of it. Sometimes, I'd actually wish the effects WOULD wear off just so I could get some real sleep lol. Good luck to you, we all feel for you and other CP patients getting screwed by this constant effort to ruin good drugs.
 
OP i know buprenorphine is usually used for addiction like methadone is, but they are both available for pain also (i see that you have tried methadone) have you tried bupe at all? it is pretty powerful even at low doses. Some say it works great for pain and some say it is only good for helping addiction.. i was on it for addiction but it also helped with my back pain so it was great.. i was on suboxone and tramadol and i had almost no pain at all. Now im just on tramadol for pain and it doesn't help as much without the buprenorphine.. you can get Subutex from a PM dr and i bet they would be glad to switch you from a full agonist to a partial. Plus Bupe has a long ass half life so is long acting.
Just my .02
Good Luck!
%)
 
I'm on the fent patches, 100mcgr/h, every 48 h. It works for me, but no perfect, i'm still on pain..well fuck, i think that all the CP patient will be the victims of the drug war...Anyfuckinway, i wish you find something that works for you, i really understand the people who are in pain, i wish that nobody should be in pain, it's a fuckin horrible thing, that can make you go crazy...


MartinFn
 
mad as hell wtf just got my script for the opana 30 and there the gummies like they did with OCs fuckkkkk. it gummies just hit ny and im fucking pissed is there a way to disolve them or anything???
 
You should consider trying dilaudid for pain as I see you have not yet. Also, you can get compounded formulations of hydrocodone that are er and contain no APAP. They are also coming out with an er hydro formulation in a year or two.

Muvo you beat me too it! I would also recommend asking if you can change to Hydromorphone. Other than 120mg morphine IR, hydromorphone is the only thing that has ever been able to kill my pain. For the analgesic effects, due to my natural tolerance, I would snort an 8mg pill, or 1.5 8mg pills if it is a really bad day. The pills are very small and its just the basic shit not a bunch of terrible time release mechanisms that do nothing but stop pill pushers and make the real patients sick.
 
Does anybody have a picture of the new ones, or any description (markings, color, size) that can help tell the difference between the old and new?

It seems like the size is the main difference:
"Endo is committed to executing a seamless transition in 2012 from the original formulation to the new formulation, which utilizes the proprietary INTAC™ technology owned by Grunenthal, a partner in the development of the product. The new formulation will continue to be called Opana ER with the same dosage strengths, color and packaging and similar tablet size and shape. Also, the FDA approval signifies that there is no significant difference in the rate and extent of absorption of the therapeutic ingredient between this new formulation and the original formulation of Opana ER" (source).

I wonder if it actually is the same tamper resistant formula as the 'OP' OxyContin. I made a post here which compares the inactive ingidients, and it doesn't seem to be the same. The new Opana uses INTAC™ technology owned by Grunenthal, but I did not find any sources that say the OxyContin has the INTAC too, but I didn't look too hard.

I think that it's important to post actual sources of this info so that we aren't just speculating about it.
 
Does anybody have a picture of the new ones, or any description (markings, color, size) that can help tell the difference between the old and new?

It seems like the size is the main difference:
"Endo is committed to executing a seamless transition in 2012 from the original formulation to the new formulation, which utilizes the proprietary INTAC™ technology owned by Grunenthal, a partner in the development of the product. The new formulation will continue to be called Opana ER with the same dosage strengths, color and packaging and similar tablet size and shape. Also, the FDA approval signifies that there is no significant difference in the rate and extent of absorption of the therapeutic ingredient between this new formulation and the original formulation of Opana ER" (source).

I wonder if it actually is the same tamper resistant formula as the 'OP' OxyContin. I made a post here which compares the inactive ingidients, and it doesn't seem to be the same. The new Opana uses INTAC™ technology owned by Grunenthal, but I did not find any sources that say the OxyContin has the INTAC too, but I didn't look too hard.

I think that it's important to post actual sources of this info so that we aren't just speculating about it.

The new ones are round, not octagonal. That's the easiest way to know. They're the same color as before. They now have an Endo "E" imprint on one side as well. I'd post a picture but I don't see a way to. Maybe because I'm a Greenlighter. Also, of course, if you cut them you can see they're not powder bound together on the inside; it's some type of solid-looking substance.
 
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