Most of us have found a loose pill that was dropped or accidentally spilled in a drawer at some point. When we find an unknown medication, we sometimes wonder, “What is this pill?” There is an easy way to identify drugs without going to your local pharmacy.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a national drug code directory that you can use to identify unrecognized medication. You can find pills, tablets, and capsules with the pharmaceutical imprint code, which are letters, symbols, and numbers that are imprinted, marked, engraved, or stamped on the surface of the medication.
Each of these codes is exclusive to the drug. Along with the code, you can identify each medication by color, form, and shape of the medicine you are trying to identify. For example, you can find M367 white oval, a pill on the list for identification.
M367, What Is It?
The pill marked M367 is a white oval tablet identified generically as acetaminophen and hydrocodone bitartrate 325/10. This means that there is 325 mg of acetaminophen per tablet along with 10 mg hydrocodone bitartrate in this pill. This is a combination drug manufactured by Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. You may have heard of this combination by another name, which is Vicodin. M367, or by the trade name Vicodin, is an opioid medication that is closely monitored as a schedule II drug.
Effective Pain Relief
The biggest draw to the M367 white oval is for effective pain relief. For moderate to severe pain on a short-term basis, this medication is a potent pain reliever. Applications for this drug would include surgery or a short-term condition from injury where you are not expected to need long-term maintenance for pain. The use of M367 has been discouraged recently for chronic long-term pain conditions such as arthritis due to the risk of opioid addiction.
Addiction Concerns
The terms opioids and opiates are used interchangeably quite often. Both opiates and opioids are addictive medications. Both forms of this powerful drug induce sleepiness and euphoria as they are both forms of narcotics.
The only difference between the two substances is that opiates are natural and sourced from the Poppy plant, just like heroin, morphine, and codeine. Opioids, such as M367, are the same substance responsible for fentanyl, methadone, and oxycodone, and M367, or hydrocodone, which are all manufactured reproductions of the natural drugs. These man-made medications are still highly effective, with a correspondingly high addiction rate.
Medication Awareness Is Important
A reminder, as with all medicine, to keep your medication safely out of the reach of children and pets to avoid poison risks. Also, never guess what medication you are holding; always identify the substance before ingesting. When you need to identify any medication, including M367, knowing how to find what you are looking for is half the battle. With easy identification from the FDA, you can find what you are looking for in seconds to put a name on an unknown pill or capsule safely.