Word: vicodin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Emmys on Sept. 18, Laurie, 46, is best known in Britain for playing lovable if priggish buffoons on the comic series Blackadder and A Bit of Fry and Laurie. In Dr. Gregory House, Laurie and the show's writers have created TV's unlikeliest new hero. The Vicodin-popping specialist's own pain does little to quell his disdain for patients like a 9-year-old cancer victim ("She's such a brave girl; I want to see how brave she is when she hears she's going to die"). "Another actor would have posed as the mumbly, moody, acceptable...
...spirit of the part, Laurie tried Vicodin once, deeming it "excellent stuff, though not to be tried at home." In fact, the actor says, he envies his character--a loner with a limp, whose primary comforts are soap operas and prescription painkillers. "House has complete freedom from anxiety over what the world thinks of him," Laurie says. "He has no need for public approval." Laurie, on the other hand, still has to get used to the roar of applause...
...problem isn't just that kids can easily become addicted to painkillers like Oxycontin or Vicodin, antianxiety medicines like Valium or Xanax, or attention-deficit-disorder drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. Taken without proper supervision, those medicines can send kids to the emergency room. They can lead to difficulty breathing, a drop or rapid increase in heart rate or trouble responding when driving a car, especially when the drugs are combined with alcohol, as they often are. Pain medications, which are also powerful nervous-system depressants, are particularly dangerous--and especially prized. "If I have something good, like Oxycontin...
Ultimately, it may be the patients who get hurt most, because a growing number of doctors, frightened of government scrutiny, are avoiding the use of powerful narcotics such as OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet and Dilaudid. "It is impossible to be sure that a patient is not diverting any of his medication," says Dr. Thomas Stinson, a Medford, Mass., anesthesiologist who is closing his 20-year practice to new pain patients. "I fear I might be targeted...
...patient's risk profile and even his or her personality. "A patient's psychological preference for treating pain can be more important than the amount of medication," Palmer says. She cites the case of an elderly woman with arthritis in her back who preferred taking the oral narcotic Vicodin to using a more potent opioid drug delivered through a patch. "The Vicodin wasn't nearly as powerful as the opioid patch," says Palmer, "yet it gave her more pain relief. That tells you this is a patient who wants control. In some patients the psychological impact of being able...