As always, this year’s Super Bowl ads spoke to the most American experiences: beer drinking, truck driving and . . . not being able to poop because you’re hooked on Vicodin.
In a black-and-white spot titled “Envy,” a man looks longingly at a squatting dog, a vat of prunes and a dude walking out of a restroom with a grin on his face. Our main character takes a prescription painkiller — and it has an embarrassing side effect: OIC, or “opioid-induced constipation.”
“Disturbing” was the reaction of Dr. Andrew Kolodny, who caught the ad for the drug, called Movantik, while watching the big game. Kolodny is chief medical officer at the Phoenix House, a national nonprofit drug and alcohol rehab organization.
“People shouldn’t be made to feel like it’s normal to be on opioids chronically — and to be constipated by them,” he says. “An ad that normalizes a dangerous and questionable medical practice may be fueling an epidemic of abuse.”
Opioids — a class of painkiller that includes hydrocodone (Vicodin) and oxycodone (OxyContin) — are highly addictive, says Kolodny, and can produce severe withdrawal symptoms including flu-like illness, insomnia and depression if they’ve been taken regularly. One CDC study found that the rate for opioid overdoses quadrupled from 1999 to 2013.
So to see one of the year’s most high-profile ad spots devoted to admitting that millions are addicted is scary, Kolodny says. The drug, which is manufactured by AstraZeneca, costs between $280 and $300 for 30 25-mg. tablets.
But not everyone thinks it’s so dire. “I think the ads are targeted less to people who are addicted to opioids, or using them to get high, than to people who are on them for chronic pain,” says addiction psychologist Arnold Washton, Ph.D.
Still, the statistics are sobering. According to the CDC, 44 people in the US die every day from prescription painkiller overdoses, and the spiraling heroin problem is directly connected to over-prescription; nearly 75 percent of heroin users start out on prescription opioids, it found. Says Kolodny: “The effects of hydrocodone and oxycodone are indistinguishable, in the brain, from what heroin produces.”
In that light, “Envy” may be in the running to be the year’s most depressing short film.