9781422282526

13 CHAPTER ONE: WHAT ARE OTC DRUGS?

OTC VERSUS PRESCRIPTION

Nearly everyone has had the experience of getting sick, seeing a doctor and being given a prescription, and then going to a pharmacy to pick up the medicine. But it hasn’t always been this way. Legislation in 1951 called the Durham-Humphrey Amendment first created the distinction between drugs that anyone could buy and those that are available only with a prescription. Drugs that anyone can buy came to be known as over-the-counter drugs because all the buyer had to do was pay for them at the drug- or grocery- store counter. In the context of substance use disorders, the concept of OTC has also expanded slightly, to encompass products that are used as drugs even though they are not intended to be used that way. For example, inhalants produce fumes that some people use to get high. Things like whipped cream cans and paint thinner are discussed in this volume because they can technically be bought “over the counter”—just not a pharmacy counter. As with cough medicine, some of these products are age restricted because of concerns about misuse. In daily life, people often use the terms drug misuse , dependence , and addiction interchangeably . But in medicine, they are different. When it comes to OTC drugs, misuse just means that the person is taking the drug in a way that it was not intended to be used. In other words, they are taking too much of the drug, taking it too frequently, or taking for incorrect reasons, such as to get high rather than to cure a cough. Any substance can be misused. For example some people misuse OTC painkillers like aspirin and ibuprofen. Those drugs do not have a mood-altering effect, of course, but sometimes people take more than the recommended amount, and this does count as “misuse.” MISUSE, DEPENDENCE, AND ADDICTION

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