New White Watson 853 10/325 Problem - What Is Going On!? (Page 12)
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Hello all, I am a longtime chronic pain sufferer. I have taken opiates for pain for over 10 years. I recently got a prescription filled (from a well known pharmacy chain in the U.S.) and I was given these new Watson 853 white (not yellow) hydro 10/325 pills. I wanted to ask the forum here if any of you have had the same experience with them as I have. I know there are some very smart people with advanced chemistry knowledge here that may have delved deeper into whats going on with these things. They are ineffective for me. I've taken hydrocodone 10/325 for 10+ years and have never ever had a problem with pills being ineffective but that is the case with these pills. I've had about every brand you can think of and never an issue. Ever. I thought nothing of the color change when I got the pills home from the pharmacy... I've had the yellow Watson 853's before and figured they just changed the coloring. I've seen people complain before about differences in brands before, but I've never experienced anything like that.... Mallies, Watson, Qualitst... all the same to me. I didn't start looking around for answers until I noticed these pills were not working well at all. Something is 100% wrong. Based on some initial research I do see that they have taken the yellow dye out but there are other reports from people with the same issues as I see. Obviously you just don't know how reputable some of these reports are... I've seen posts talk about pharmacists telling the patient that the pills now are structured to release hydrocodone slower (even though its an IR pill... what?)... that Actavis/Watson employees have claimed there could be "kinetic imbalances" in their formulation when upset customers have called them... etc. The only truth I know is that there is something amiss with these things. Any response would be appreciated from you guys.... experiences/info/links to other similar reports, etc. This is the most frustrating thing I have ever run into and it just doesn't make much sense to me at the moment with whats going on....and the implications this could have if these pills have been truly altered by the manufacturer in some way. I know it doesn't mean much to just say it on an internet forum, but I'm not the type to cry wolf over something like this. I realize it could be a bad batch I've received, but it looks initially like the problem is more widespread. TIA for any responses to this thread! I came here because I believe this site has people that have the intelligence/knowledge to get to the bottom of it. Again, any info at all in relation to this would be appreciated greatly.

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I do not take hydros anymore but did have experience with those when they first came on the market. I personally did have a prefence between hydros. I remember they use to have the blues, pinks, and yellows. All 3 of those were really good IMO, however I always liked the pinks and yellows the best. Now once the whites came out I was very dissatisfied. I completely agree they did something more than just take out the dye. Even in the 7.5 they offered the peach ones at one time and they were much better than the whites or any other color and then they took the peach off the shelf, too. I have taken Opana and OxyContin in the past also and experienced the similar effect when they reformulated them. I truly fill they did some thing to the hydros to make them less abusive when they reformulated or less strong, NO DOUBT! One good thing about my comment is I have never taken these meds any other way than oral and also i pretty much take as prescribed (unless it's a really bad pain day and I add an extra med which my docs approve that) not judging anyone's for doing it differently just saying if I can tell a huge difference in taking all these meds orally I'm sure taking them any other way has changed dramatically, also. However either way all of these meds have changed so much and as chronic pain sufferer myself it sucks because it is hard to get increases when you are already on pretty high levels and I personally don't want to get an increase but it had to happen because of it. First I went off of the hydros and changed to Oxycodone (or roxicodone) then I just recently switched back to the fentanyl patch because the best top ER brands have all changed their formulations and are less effective. When will they ever understand abuse is going to happen regardless of how they make meds or what they do to make it safer abuse WILL happen that's why opiate overdoses have been on the rise. So why keep making a product worse by trying to make it abuse proof or whatever the reason might be. It's just crazy. I know within a week of them reformulating Opana, a lady already had it figured out how to abuse them again and had a video up on YouTube. I never did see it but heard about it. So it's inevitable. All they are doing is making true chronic pain patients suffer more, When addicts and abusers will always find a way regardless. So I apologize for getting off topic but yes they are less effective and it's not in your mind, they are! Change to Oxycodone plus you don't have to worry about acetaminophen, course I'm sure they will call that in soon for a reformulated version, eventually. smh. Have a great day and hopefully a less painful day, as well!

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I have been on hydrocodone 10/500 for 13 years,the thing is your body builds up a resistance and rebound pain I'm sure you know is worse than your initial pain,there is no conspiracy as posted below.They took the dye out. Period, the end. Ask your doctor,you're probably immune. Switch to something like Tylenol #3 and get off hydrocodone, the most addictive pain med. A nurse and patient. Yes, I got off.

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michael, any pill that is made by a manufaturer that is Not the manufacurer that held the original patent is cosidered a Generic. They no longer manufacurer M357 because it contains Acetaminophen 500 mg along with Hydrocodone 5 mg. They now make it with Acetaminophen 325 mg and Hydrocodone 5 mg and it is M365.

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Definitely know were you're coming from on the white watson 853 10/325; there are times when i take em and they wont knock the pain down or anything and other times i feel like as if i just took a perc 30, very few though. i can take 2 m357 and definitely tell they're working every time, though not the 853. though i honestly think the manufacturer gets cheap and you dont get all the hydrocodone in a pill like your supposed to. m357 isnt considered a generic pill and costs more but maybe for a reason they spit alot of those 853's out you gotta know alot of em arent getting all the hydrocodone in em when they get made, being made by the 1000s a minute something's gonna screw up and not allow a good wack of them to get dosed right.

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BL - they may be able to get away with putting only 8mg in a '10mg' tab in the USA but I assure you that generics (and I thought this applied everywhere but obviously only in Europe) MUST BY LAW CONTAIN PRECISELY THE STATED ie same as patent brand AMOUNT OF API PER DOSAGE UNIT. Otherwise they would certainly not be given market authorisation.
I am aware that hundteds of US-made generics are appallingly poor yet highly priced - the result of your ridiculous and greed driven Healthcate policies, which actually allows the industry to regulate itself without any need to report to any agency or Govt department. Also I can not understand how they permit a LAW Enforcement agency to intetfere with doctors' professional ptescribing practices, particularly when dealing with chronic pain patients who need strong opioids - several absolutely essential medicines such as diamorphine and dipipanone which no doc could possibly do without, surely, are scheduled as having "no clinical use"!
Some of your practices (which essentially condemn the less well off to crap meds) are unable to be understood on this side of the pond and only reinforce the idea that the USA is the most divisive country in the world based on income and nothing else, with sickeningly rich companies exploiting the people to enrich executives who often work very few hours with little exertion compared with your average steel worker or miner. And look at what they earn in their often life threatening jobs, which cause diseases which again enrich Big Pharma!
Nope, generic meds should contain what they say on the box, not 10% less just because... of what exactly???

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I'm in for a legal suit!!! The fact that our FDA is trying to get away with adding and taking away ingredients and I (we) am dealing with the consequences makes me furious. Big pharma too! Trust me..it is only going to get worse. I've seen the proposals. They are already placing deterrants in the opiates Norco to keep you from getting addicted and that would be okay but now I'm not getting any pain relief and I'm nauseated and sleepy. It's getting scary.

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Mark, there is nothing to sue over. It is no secret that generics can vary in the amount of Active Ingredients compared to brands. If a generic tablet says it has 10 mg, it can have 8 mg-12 mg of active ingredients. Also fillers and binders can affect how the active ingredients are absorbed in individuals. If you actually count the people on the internet that have said that a certain drug is weaker and you compare that to the millions and millions that take the drug daily, the percentage of those that say the drug is weaker is insignificant. If a certain generic doesn't work as well as others, call your phsrmacy and ask them what other generic manufacturers they have for that drug. You also need to remember that if you have insurance, the insurance more than likely dictates if there is a choice in generics, which one(s) you get. Depending on the insurance, the cheaper ones are the first choice. If a pharmacy doesn't have a choice, the insurance will pay for the generic they have.

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T may be for Tramadol. I have tried a script of them but became very nauseous, nervous, irritable, and barely, if at all, got any relief! Also on a test with white hydro. Tramadol showed up when I hadn't even taken them for a year! The white melt like chalk too! Yes I too think they are changed in order to wean the human race from them. I've read comments that each of you have mentioned and it's gotten so bad. So find a good Pharmacy that carry's the yellow. The white are nock offs for people that abuse them. Kinda like people that I've heard even selling food stamps! workin the gover

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I hear you Jack! We all are experiencing watered down narcotic analgesics in all the different active ingredients. It's not just hydrocodone... Seems there should be a legal suit against the pharmaceutical industry.

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These thing don't do anything at all. Tylenol works better and I'm not trying to be funny. I doubled my dose and didn't help with my pain at all. And I'm going through withdrawals on them. I don't think there is anything in them. It's a 100% bogus company or something.

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I don't have any new info for you but I totally agree with your assessment. I used to take hydrocodone 10.325 and always insisted on the watson brand because they worked. That is until they took out the yellow dye and made the pills white. I had to have my Dr up my dose from 4 a day to the maximum of 6. That still didn't relieve my pain so I asked him for oxycodone (Percocet) 10.325. Those work but there is a brand that starts with an M that don't work as well as the others. I always get mine at Walgreens and they give me an oblong white pill. Maybe we should all call watson and demand they put the yellow color and the other ingredient back in that pill.

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Have a Watson 853hydrocodone script and I have noticed a few times in the past 12 scripts that a good portion of the pills seemed to not be effective you gotta figure there's billions of these things made each year there's gonna be a few out there that didn't get measured correctly I'm figuring anyway machine not distributing correctly?

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queeniek, If people are really interested, they will read in the Federal Registery the year before the amount of active ingredients that the DEA is giving to the manufacturers and comment then because that is the appropiate time and place to do so.

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Watson does make the Norco's as well, just wanted to throw that out there.

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You are all experiencing what many of us on generic Adderall are dealing with. Fake meds and if we all had enough cash to send a couple pills to LabCorp I bet they wouldn't turn up positive for the active narcotic ingredient. FDA has been told by DEA to turn a blind eye on weak opiated and amphetamined generic meds. They think everyone is just a junky and it will do us some good to have inefficient meds.

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Here is what we need to do- create a petition on Change.org. BL... Why don't u draft it up??? Starting and promoting your campaign is simple: Write your petition, address it to the relevant decision maker, and start sharing your campaign with family and friends. Send your petition to your local media to get public support. Deliver your signatures to the decision maker and urge them to take a stand on your campaign. It's a powerful tool for those who want to see change in 2016. Make it your resolution to make change today. Start your petition now.

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ABellflower you are exactly correct and the new opiate epidemic will be opium from the streets coming across the wide open border of Mexico. This is going to be the new nightmare created by our government with gangs having bloody battles on our streets for territory to sell it. Plus the terrorists are going to be well funded by opium sells here in America, funny the government doesn't see that coming!
What the government is doing is like putting a bandaid on you after walking through a plate glass window and telling you you'll be OK... Their war on drugs has been an epic failure which they refuse to admit, so they stop doctors from treating legitimately suffering human beings which is complete insanity! They can do nothing about street drugs coming into this country and now in the near future it will be an unbelievable epidemic of street drug abuse and many more deaths from overdoses and poisonous toxins used to make the drugs with.
I'm a nobody, but I have enough sense to know if you stop one avenue of abuse of drugs many more will be created. In my opinion pharmaceutical drug abuse is indeed the lesser of two evils because there's no telling what you're getting in a street drug. There's really no good answer to the drug abuse problem in America today, but punishing legitimately suffering people is complete insanity! One thing is for certain though... Anytime the government gets involved in anything the innocent will always suffer and what ever the initial problem was will be made worse because no politician was ever born with any common sense...

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It seems that all who are posting on this board seem to be having issues, and that is probably just the tip of the iceberg. My opinion? There's "dilution," for lack of the technical term, going on with all narcotic medications. Someone else who claims to have inside knowledge says he was told that it's a government and pharm. company plan to discourage addiction in the face of the current opiate epidemic in the U.S.

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I think they are at it again. My husband who is in chronic pain got his prescription filled at Wgreens for the first time in Dec 2015. Has been in such pain with no relief until last night I gave him ONE of my hydro-acet 5-325,half as potent as his and he slept like a baby with great relief. Something was wrong with his new meds, the white watson. What do we do now ???? Anyone else out there having issues?

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Mark is correct, at least it's been my experience, also, that the smaller family drugstores will usually carry or will be willing to order something that is closer to the "real thing."

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