drug ID (not pill ID) out of date q

[EvMan717]

i found a bottle that says enylpropanolamine HCL, and the paper is ripped to the left of the e. there are no pills in the bottle, i am just wondering what it was.
also, if pills are out of date, do they lose their potency? can they be harmful? i ask this b/c i found an OLD script of hydrocodone, and the bottle says they expired in '99. are these safe to take? I am 100% positive they are hydrocods, i tested them

 

[Ayrios]

Safe though probably a little bit of potency has been lost.

 

[Grand Master of Somniferon]

Originally posted by EvMan717:
i found a bottle that says enylpropanolamine HCL, and the paper is ripped to the left of the e. there are no pills in the bottle, i am just wondering what it was.
also, if pills are out of date, do they lose their potency? can they be harmful? i ask this b/c i found an OLD script of hydrocodone, and the bottle says they expired in '99. are these safe to take? I am 100% positive they are hydrocods, i tested them
opiates are good for a while. The exp. date is just procedure. And the other one was prolly phenylpropanalamine, which is a decongestant, as well as the active in dexatrim. Don't think that they sell it anymore though.

 

[stardragon]

A while ago I found a secret stash of various codeine-ated pills that my mother had been keeping (but surely forgotten she had) from all the times family members had been prescribed them (surgery, dentistry what have you).. among them were T2's I had been prescribed way back in 1987 when I had a bunch of teeth extracted, as well as some more that were about 3 years old that had been prescribed to my father.
Now, I am merely the low-level softcore type.. I wound up taking a whole bunch of them in varying doses up to a total of 120mg (although not all at once, that was over a short period of time - I've read that codeine blocks its own activity and thus you cannot "boost", you have to take your whole dose at the beginning?) and never once did I get even the buzz I got off four or five of the 5mg generic vicodin she also had. At the time I thought "well maybe there really is such a thing as expiration date!" but then I attempted this again with a few T3's that were less than six months old, and again pretty much nothing.
Later it occurred to me that this might be not that they had "spoiled", but rather that "codeine" and "hydrocodone" are not the same thing. I had assumed the pills had the same substance in them but I think I was mistaken. Would someone care to bitch-slap me and say "yes moron, that was exactly the problem"?
[ 13 May 2002: Message edited by: stardragon ]

 

[Dr.groveller]

Originally posted by stardragon:
Later it occurred to me that this might be not that they had "spoiled", but rather that "codeine" and "hydrocodone" are not the same thing. I had assumed the pills had the same substance in them but I think I was mistaken. Would someone care to bitch-slap me and say "yes moron, that was exactly the problem"?
[ 13 May 2002: Message edited by: stardragon ]
Consider yourself bitch-slapped. Hydrocodone and codeine are NOT the same thing, neither is oxycodone.
rxlist for more
doc

 

[travis2600]

And an apple isn't the same as codeine, either. But seriously, if you wanted to get a buzz off the codeine, you'de have to take around 200mg, all at once. But Don't try that with T2's, because of all the APAP... Don't know how much exactly... In fact I didn't even know tylenol #2 were still used.

 

[methadist]

I took a couple of 5 mg Vicodins that were six years past expiration and experienced no loss of potencey or adverse reactions.
While a few "tablet type" drugs do have limited shelf life, IMHO, most of those drugs with expiration dates represent nothing more than a means for pharmaceutical companies to get more money !!

 

[quale]

t2s have like what 30mg of codeine and at most 500mg of APAP. You can easily do 10 of them and at worst ingest 5g of APAP. As long as you don't do this alot and don't drink with it you should be fine (of course I am assuming you are a healthy normal person without liver problems etc..)
Do a search for one of the APAP toxicity threads zorn has posted some pretty good data on the subject.
Also you would be taking a crazy amount (tho maybe not to some tolerant people around here) if you took 120mg of hydrocodone. That is like 24 vics.
Finally yes codeine does inhibit its own conversion into morphine, however, there is no prima facia reason this should require dosing all at once. However, this appears to be what many people on the board have found in their experience.

 

[Grand Master of Somniferon]

Originally posted by quale:
t2s have like what 30mg of codeine and at most 500mg of APAP.
.
T-2's only have 15 mg of codeine. The "T" series (1,2,3,4) have 8,15,30, and 60 mg of codeine, respectlivly. They may contain a small amount of caffiene as well. Also, the Tylenol #'s and generics only have 325 mg of APAP in them...Some foreign preps, such as panadeine forte are 30/500 codeine/APAP.

 

[stardragon]

I know hydrocodone is different from codeine... what I meant was I had assumed the tylenol's had hydrocodone in them like vicodin and it only later occurred to me that perhaps the problem was that when they said "codeine", they meant it literally (therefore, as I discovered, drastically less potency). When people refer to vicodin/generic just as as "codeine" it gets kind of confusing.

 

[Grand Master of Somniferon]

Originally posted by stardragon:
I know hydrocodone is different from codeine... what I meant was I had assumed the tylenol's had hydrocodone in them like vicodin and it only later occurred to me that perhaps the problem was that when they said "codeine", they meant it literally (therefore, as I discovered, drastically less potency). When people refer to vicodin/generic just as as "codeine" it gets kind of confusing.
I think that T-3's as compared to Lortab 5's are pretty much the same as far as equianalgesia is concerned. Hydro is roughly 6 times as potent as codeine, so in theory, a T-3 (30mg cod) is the same as far as analgesia goes as a 5 mg hydro pill. Obviously they are different as far as buzz goes, and hydro is much more effecient at providing pain relief (at least IME), but as far as potency goes, a 5 mg hydro shoudl be roughly the same as a 30 mg codeine. In fact, I think that I read somewhere (here?) that Vicodin got the name b/c it's six times (VI) as potent as codeine (Codin)...get it? (VI)(Codin)

 

[Dr.groveller]

When people refer to vicodin/generic just as as "codeine" it gets kind of confusing.[/QB]
Find more intelligent people to hand around with... never heard vics referred to as codeine.
doc

 

[moridin]

older people 40+ always say codeine instead of hydrocodone.