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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Jan 20.
Published in final edited form as: J Pain Manag Med. 2015 Nov 9;1(1):103.

Table 9.

Medication and illicit substance use.

N %
How quickly do you initiate abortive treatment to stop and/or to treat symptoms?
Immediately 2046 48.2
Within one hour 1368 32.2
One to two hours 410 9.7
Two to four hours 157 3.7
More than four hours 37 0.9
N/A 227 5.3
Reasons not treated immediately
I need to make sure it is really a migraine 899 18.8
Don’t want to waste medication 1086 22.7
I get a lot of false alarms 114 2.4
I don’t want to overuse medications 1239 25.9
Other 330 6.9
Illicit Treatments
Used a drug that was not prescribed to treat migraine 1056 26.1
Ever used illicit drug to treat migraine 385 9.5
Used marijuana 806 19.9
Used alcohol to treat migraine 289 7.1
Used nicotine/tobacco to treat migraine 189 4.7
Ever avoided a medication because of side effects 2699 66.8
Ever stopped a medication due to side effects 3034 75.1
Stopped due to:
nausea/vomiting 1075 22.5
stomach ache 600 12.5
rebound headaches 1378 28.8
dizziness 966 20.2
cognitive challenges 1677 35.0
other reason 1687 35.2
Avoided medicine due to cost 1961 48.9
Withheld medication because you wanted to “spare” or “save” medication 3055 76.1
How many different prescription products do you currently use to treat migraine
0 295 7.4
1 662 16.6
2 969 24.3
3 839 21.1
4 or more 1215 30.5
How many (if any) prescription products have you EVER USED to TREAT your migraines? By “ever used” we mean that you have ever taken at any point to treat your migraines.
0 23 0.6
1 108 2.7
2 289 7.3
3 415 10.4
4 412 10.4
5 311 7.8
6 or more 2422 60.9
How much would you estimate that you pay out of pocket monthly for medications and care related to your migraines, including insurance co-pays?
0–100 1824 45.5
101–250 1135 28.3
251–500 469 11.7
>500 288 7.2
not sure 297 7.4