They are miserable drugs for a lot of people. They are entirely inappropriate for long-term pain management. I've found, for acute short-term pain management, Meloxicam, steroids, and muscle relaxants are all good. Percocet only helped in that it made me sleep, but after only a couple days, I needed it to sleep. It did not alleviate my pain one bit. A plain old sleeping pill would have been better.

The group Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescription (http://www.supportprop.org/) has a couple videos that are jawdropping. Prescription opioid manufacturers have blatantly lied in order to get their extremely addictive drugs prescribed to people. It's frankly criminal, and now causes more deaths than any other form of accidental death, including car accidents. People are going to die because of Zohydro, and not "just" people using it to get high. If you forget you already took a pill -- and it's rather easy to forget things when you're on opioids -- and take another, that's it.

I don't usually ascribe conspiracy, but in this case, drug manufacturers have created a perfect way to keep making money. Taking opioids for the long-term makes them significantly less effective for anyone and even causes more pain in lots of people. Their solution: prescribe more! Which doesn't work. Oh then you must not be prescribing enough. You monster who wants people to be in pain you. And when it's pointed out that these things don't work, I noticed in browsing this stuff last night, they always somehow come up with the idea that Tylenol causes liver damage. Which, when used properly by people who drink little or no alcohol, it does not. And of course they try to ignore the fact of the existence of ibuprofen and aspirin entirely.