My pharmacist told me that you *can* get hydrocodone alone, but for some reason, only in a brand name that naturally costs about ten times as much as the typical hydro-APAP or other cheap generics. (This was for post-dental surgery, if you need to know.) So for such occasional, brief usages, it’s much cheaper to get the combo.

But the point about House’s liver — specific warnings against combining acetaminphen with alcohol regularly, too– he should obtain the single-ingredient product. I’m sure he can get an employee discount. ;)

Also, I’m with the people who say House doesn’t need the pain, he’s just being stubborn and needs it psychologically because it’s familiar and he feels more in control. (I’m sure if he gave the methadone some time he would’ve returned to good ol’ grumpy, sarcastic, cynical House, just pain-free.)

You do have to be careful of the dosage you take, as well as what other meds you take with it and you can not drink alcohol. But – if you know what you are doing – you won’t have any trouble. I think it was stupid for them to make House stop breathing like that. That makes him seem stupid – because he is a very intellegient dr – and for him to stop breathing – he would of had to take another medication with it that causes the breathing to slow (example would be benzos such as valium, xanax, etc.). House wouldn’t be that stupid.

Now House wasn’t doing it to get off pain meds – he was doing it for pain. It totally stopped the pain. This could happen – as methadone is a lot stronger that what he was taking. Also, I can’t figure out why he is only taking Vicodin ES. This is 7.5 mg. He takes more than one at a time. A Dr would prescribe Norco’s instead if they were to prescribe the Vicodin family of narcotics. Norco is a 10mg pill with 325 mg of tylenol in it. Regular Vicodin tends to have bunches of tylenol in them – this effects the kidneys and liver. That is why some dr’s change to Norcos and sadly to Oxycontin.

With House and the writers and dr’s on the show being so intelligent and finding cures for most all of their cases, they take a dumb and not very bright approach to this subject. Do your homework before you do another show with a narcotic such as Methadone. I was very disappointed.

In the LaLa Land of this program, nobody ever worries about the costs rung by countless tests, invasive procedures, and snap ordering of various drugs. Not one peep when unnecessary surgeries are performed. Ethics issues arise when the hospital administrator claims reputation damage from Dr Foreman’s lapse in giving Thirteen the test drug, but nobody bats an eye when one or more team members breaks into the patients home to ‘investigate’. Never is the patient asked permission.

A perpetually annoying aspect is that an entire team is assigned to work with just 1 or 2 patients at a time. Equally disturbing is the fact that the team is shown constantly performing mundane nursing actions for the central character patient in each episode, which we know is never done by any doctor, let alone by many nurses in a busy ER ward.

Now wouldn’t it be interesting if the cast were to face a real time crisis, say…a mobbed ER waiting room full of sick patients, many or most of whom are suffering from this pandemic influenza. Contrast the dilemma of a harried and short-handed staff trying to sort through who is to be treated and whom to send home.

That is what our hospitals are facing presently. And the situation is going to get worse, much worse, in the next 60-90 days.

Anyway, I loved the mundane, “you two are idiots” solution to this one.

And I’m a little curious about narcotics now. I’ve heard that heroin addicts can have their dependency managed with maintenance doses of heroin (or morphine, or whatever). While I realize this kind of thing is presently impossible (or at least extremely difficult) in the United States (due to the DEA’s ridiculous scheduling policies and the concomitant difficulty of obtaining controlled doses under medical supervision, not to mention the puritanical attitudes of Americans toward drug addiction in general, best exemplified on House by Tritter), I’m now wondering if in fact heroin itself might be a better tool for helping heroin addicts to function than methadone is. Scott mentioned the increased risk of respiratory depression from methadone (while also saying that this was overstated by the show), but then again, methadone lasts longer (if I remember correctly).

So what do you guys think? Could heroin clinics be safer than methadone clinics?