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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

How Long Do Medications Last in Their Packaging?

Michael_25

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
703
I have a prescription for Percocet. I haven't touched a pill yet and it's been over a week now. Does the oxy lose its potency when not used in a short period of time? I have the packet on my computer desktop, just laying there in its sealed box. Sorry if this is an asinine question.

Thanks!
 
They should be good for at least a hundred years, if kept in a dry and cool place they should last until the sun explodes.
 
I work in the drug industry - tablets are usually rated for 12 months when stored at room temp although most will last longer than that. We put the 12 month expiration mostly to cover our asses. The medication won't really " go bad" and poison you, but what can happen sometimes is that the active ingredient undergoes changes which make it not absorb as well, so you don't get the full dose. For reasons I won't really go into here, oxycodone and hydrocodone tablets do not have this problem and should last a very long time as long as they don't get moist or exposed to heat (although I'm sure the expiration date listed on the bottle is 12 months)
 
Most synthetic compounds are extremely stable, they don't really break down much under regular circumstances.
 
Opioids in general have a much longer shelf life than a lot of drugs, especially stuff like antibiotics, which can degrade rather more quickly than many drugs. Your oxycodone will be perfectly good for many years to come. When I was in junior high school in the mid 1980s, I would often self medicate for undiagnosed panic disorder (I thought I was going crazy and couldn't tell anyone or they would put me in a rubber room. Opioids and benos helped, I discovered) by raiding medicine cabinets for old, unfinished opioid and benzo scripts. I have taken opiods from the 1970s and they were still good. Just keep them safe from moisture, light, heat, children, and extreme fluctuations in temperatures (the amber colored bottles most prescriptions come in are for protection from light).
 
Thanks for the replies, guys. When you say keep them away from "light", are you referring to sunlight or just normal light globe lights?
 
Sunlight mainly. But usually medications that are light sensitive are packaged in such a way to keep them from being exposed to uv radiation to start with.

Some medications can degrade with pronged exposure to heat too. But we're talking several months at the earliest. Not weeks. At least not with temperatures they're at all likely to get close too.
 
The only drug that I know of that "goes bad" within the first couple of years is tetracycline (an antibiotic and not in any way a recreational drug). There was a case back in the 70's of people getting a renal illness called "Fanconi syndrome" from taking expired tetracycline because it begins to form epitetracycline and anhydrotetracycline, which are both dangerous.

Besides that one, there are almost no stories of people getting sick from taking expired medications. Some of them can begin to lose a small bit of potency after a couple of years or longer though.
 
Yeah just to be clear, losing potency is what I meant when I said they can degrade. It doesn't always take a couple years, but it depends on the environment they've been stored in and the active compounds involved. But you're right, most take a long time to degrade to a point where it's a real issue. And you're right that very very few degrade into anything harmful.
 
Oh right. It does depend a lot on how they are stored. The less air, moisture and sunlight the better. Blisterpackaged drugs will usually last longer than those in a bottle.
 
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