I’ve written about this stupidity before. I’ll do it again next year. It will still be stupid then. [1]

“The National Prescription Drug Take Back Day aims to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications.”

Drug Enforcement Administration, DIVERSION CONTROL DIVISION

The above is the standard announcement celebrating October 25th, the DEA’s 29th designated drug take-back day. 

Puzzling. The program began in 2010, yet this is the 29th anniversary. This immediately raises some mathematical questions. If this is an annual event, then the DEA must think that a year is 6.20 months long. 

This can be accounted for by two mitigating factors:

It’s not an annual event; it is scheduled for the last day of April and October, so that number does hold up. Sort of…

Perhaps more importantly, 

In which case, we are, in fact, celebrating the 5,475th take-back day; 5,504 if you count the official days twice.

In other words, there is not a single day when the DEA does not want to take back your drugs, something that any of the millions of people plagued by chronic, severe pain will attest to.

(The DEA also implies that old opiates go bad. They don’t.)

This is not advice, just a superior opinion

If you feel like participating, go ahead. Just know that if you’re giving back opiates for some presumably sane reason, please know that the chances of getting them back lie on the electromagnetic continuum somewhere between vanishingly small and tastefully extinct. Just try to walk into an ER with a spear stuck in your eye. You are more likely to be offered a trampoline than morphine or a couple of Percocet pills. 

Really? Yes. Check out Figure 1. There are a whole lot fewer opiates available. Doctors aren’t leaving them in candy dishes on the receptionists’ desk, and “opioid-free emergency rooms” are quite fashionable these days.

 

Figure 1. U.S. prescription opioid dispensing rate (2012–2023), combining CDC and AMA/IQVIA data. Chart generated with assistance from AI (ChatGPT, 2025).

How I will celebrate Take Back Day

It’s an important day to avoid, indeed, so I’m not taking any chances. I made my own calendar! Just in case I was going to accidentally lose my mind and send my drugs back. 

 

What if you still want to participate in some way?

If you’re still feeling civic-minded and determined to give something back, try choosing something actually designed to be given back – suppositories. Here’s one possible idea—and do savor the passive-aggressive intonation aimed at the DEA.

 

 

NOTE:

[1] In my opinion, you have to be out of your mind to give up your pain meds. First, they don’t go bad. Second, if children are a concern, lock them up and hide the key. If you’re worried about becoming addicted, ask yourself why you still have a bottle of 27 (originally 30) ten-year-old Vicodins in your medicine cabinet.