A brief history of some opioids: 1. Opium. Been used by humans for a long time. 2. Morphine. Isolated version of the primary active ingredient, first extracted around 1804. First sold in 1817 as painkiller and treatment for opium and alcohol addiction.
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3. Heroin (diamorphine). First sold under that name in 1895 by Bayer as a non-addictive substitute for morphine in cough suppressants. Actually more addictive. 4. Codeine. One of the other active ingredients in opium. The stuff Bayer was _trying_ to synthesize with Heroin.
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5. Oxycodone. First synthesized in 1916. Roughly 1.5x as strong as morphine. The idea was to be a less addictive Heroin substitute; Bayer had stopped selling it a few years prior. Surprise: it was _not_ less addictive.
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6. Hydrocodone. Semi-synthetic codeine derivative. First synthesized around 1920. AFAIK about as habit-forming as morphine, less so than oxycodone/heroin. ...sometime around the 30s or so, people caught on to the fact that pretty much all opioids seem to be habit-forming.
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There's many newer (and stronger) synthetic opioids after that, but at least they mostly stopped advertising the New Fancy Opioid as treatment for Old Opiod Addiction every time, so I guess that was progress.
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I've been told once that most of the "Heroin" sold on the street is actually Dilaudid (Hydromorphone), and that there is a fear among some medical professionals that at one point politics will "catch up" and will make it (and Oxymorphone) unavailable as painkillers.
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