Pronunciation: KOH-deen
Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number: 76-57-3. (Phosphate hemihydrate form 41444-62-6)
Formal Names: BRON, Methylmorphine, Tylenol №3
Informal Names: AC/DC, Barr, C, Captain Cody, Co-Dine, Cody, Coties, Cough Syrup, Down, Homebake, Karo, Lean, Lean & Dean, Nods, Schoolboy, Syrup, T-3s. With glutethimide: Doors & 4, 4 Doors, Hits, Loads, Packets, Pancakes & Syrup, Sets, 3s & 8s
Type: Depressant (opiate class).
Federal Schedule Listing: Schedule II, III, V controlled substance, depending on product formulation (DEA no. 9050)
USA Availability: Prescription and nonprescription
Pregnancy Category: C

Codeine Phosphate [Tylenol №3] Uses. Codeine was discovered in 1832 by French chemist Pierre-Jean Robiquet. Typically it is derived from the more potent drug morphine, which, depending on dosage route (oral, injection), is considered about 3 to 12 times stronger than codeine. After codeine is administered, body chemistry transforms it back into morphine; thus employer drug screens on someone who used a codeine cough remedy can be positive for morphine. Basically codeine is a prodrug, a substance having little medicinal effect itself but that the body transforms into a useful drug—in this case, morphine. Although scientists have long believed that codeine’s therapeutic effects come from morphine, as the twenty-first century began, one group of researchers reported that persons whose bodies cannot properly convert codeine into morphine can nonetheless experience medical benefit from codeine itself. Read the rest of this entry »