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In a new study, researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Nova Southeastern University in Miami set out to identify which prescription drugs were abused the most. The team interviewed drug abusers who entered rehabilitation programs throughout the United States and found that oxycodone was the drug of choice.

"Opioids are prescribed to treat pain, but their misuse has risen dramatically in recent years," said principal investigator Theodore J. Cicero, PhD, a Washington University researcher. "Our goal is to understand the personal characteristics of people who are susceptible to drug abuse, so we can detect problems ahead of time."

The research team surveyed over 3,500 people from 160 drug treatment programs within the nation. The survey was focused on identifying the most common abused drugs and the reasons why people started to abuse these drugs. The team found that 45 percent, which was the highest rate, of people abused oxycodone, which is commonly sold as OxyContin and Percocet. 30 percent of the people stated that they preferred hydrocodone, which is commonly sold as Vicadin.

The researchers found that 64 percent of the people who abused oxycodone chose to crush up the tablets in order to inhale it. Only 25 percent of the people who abused hydrocodone took the drug in the same way. One out of five people who used oxycodone and less than five percent of people who used hydrocodone took them by dissolving the pills and injecting them. The team also found that 54 percent of the people reported preferring the high they got from oxycodone while only 20 percent of the hydrocodone users reported the same thing.

"Among the reasons addicts prefer oxycodone is that they can get it in pure form," Cicero said. "Until recently, all drugs with hydrocodone as their active ingredient also contained another product such as acetaminophen, the pain reliever in Tylenol. That turns out to be very important because addicts don't like acetaminophen."

The researchers conducted a follow-up interview on around 200 people. They found that even though these users abused prescription drugs, they were not interested in abusing more potent drugs.

"Addicts will crush OxyContin pills and inject or snort them to get high, but they don't seem to want to take more potent prescription drugs," Cicero said according to Medical Xpress. "Those drugs-such as hydromorphone, fentanyl and dilaudid-have a pretty small safety margin. When you look at the dose to produce euphoria versus the amount required for overdose, it's a pretty small difference. Even serious drug abusers said they try to avoid those drugs."

The study was published in Pain.