Holy shit. And for the first time in three decades of using that expletive, I actually mean it literally. I have just learned that opioid addicts who are either trying to detox themselves or trying to avoid acute withdrawal symptoms between scores have been ingesting Costco-amounts of the over-the-counter anti-diarrhea medication Imodium A-D. And if extreme constipation wasn’t punishment enough, several people have overdosed and died, according to The New York Times.
The Party That’s Not in Your Pants
In case you’re questioning how this trend came about—the same way one might wonder who the first nut bag was to lick a toad and realize it got you high—Imodium A-D’s euphoric effects are much less cryptic. Apparently, the anti-explosion drug, clinically called loperamid was available by prescription only from 1976, when the FDA approved it, to 1988 (it was in the same drug class as cocaine and methadone). Now, as you know, it’s available on the shelves of your local supermarket. But what you may not know is that it’s now coined “the poor man’s methadone” (and here I thought methadone was the poor man’s methadone!)
So how did we get here? How did Americans go from lunchtime martinis on Madison Avenue to constipating themselves for a buzz? Unfortunately, this Imodium A-D party likely started as a result of the CDC’s Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, released on March 15. This first-ever reference guide acts as a warning to all doctors and according to Andrew Kolodny, executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, it’s one that they are likely to follow. In other words, fewer opioid prescriptions = more addicts following this shitty trend.
The Domino Effect
Docs aren’t the only ones getting in line to pull addicts from the tit. States like Massachusetts have already begun limiting the number of pills that can be prescribed post-surgery to a week’s supply. That is sure to have chronic users heading for the shelves of CVS for a fix. So so gross and so so happening!
But what is really bad is that these poor people (literally and figuratively) probably think they are giving their bodies a break by putting down the Oxy and doing an Imodium maintenance plan for a week or so. Maybe they have a plan to get clean or maybe they are waiting for a check from their baby daddy; either way, one thing these Imodium abusers are probably not banking on is dying.
But ironically, the Annals of Emergency Medicine (not a joke) has recently reported two deaths in New York linked to loperamide abuse and there were another 12 classes of fatal overdoses or life-threatening irregular heartbeats as a result of Imodium A-D in five other states in the last year-and-a-half.
Lose The Battle, Win the War
So basically, efforts to regulate opioid medication and undo the damage of the pill-popping free-for-all that we’re currently experiencing is, for right now, a lose-lose. It doesn’t mean, of course, that regulation is the wrong move—something has to be done about the prescription opioid addiction in this country—but we have to accept that there will be some collateral damage. Of course, there is more collateral damage if we don’t do anything—as we have seen from the seemingly never- ending string of deaths related to abuse. All of which is to say that when we read about people OD-ing on anti-diarrhea medications, we have to remember that you sometimes have to lose battles to win the war.
But what does this mean for us, the little people who innocently made the wrong food choices last night but have a 9 am meeting where it really wouldn’t be cool if we pooped our pants? Is Imodium A-D going the way of Sudafed, where we are going to have to look a freaking pharmacist in the eye and show picture ID to boot, just to get through the day? More will be revealed but holy shit, talk about incomprehensible demoralization.
Sponsored DISCLAIMER: This is a paid advertisement for California Behavioral Health, LLC, a CA licensed substance abuse treatment provider and not a service provided by The Fix. Calls to this number are answered by CBH, free and without obligation to the consumer. No one who answers the call receives a fee based upon the consumer’s choice to enter treatment. For additional info on other treatment providers and options visit www.samhsa.gov.
