I don't post here often unless I am asking a question, I am not
a pharmacist, I am a registered safety professional and a volunteer
paramedic and advanced life support instructor, so my information is
from personal experience only, having had back surgery and been on
some of the medications you are referring to as well as a very very limited
knowledge of pharmacology and phamocologic therapies.

Firstly, everyone is different, for me, hydrocodone works much better
for somatic pain than stronger things like Percocet (oxycodone) I was
even on Demerol once for a dental procedure and hydrocodone worked
better for me than it did, percocet and Demerol are scheduled as stronger
and more addictive opiate pain relievers than hydrocodone and codeine.

My point is just this, some people may get more relief from Tylenol #3
which has 30 mg of codeine phosphate or Tylenol #4 which has 60 mg I
believe.  I get better relief from just 5 mg of hydrocodone bitartrate which
is roughly similar to 30 mg of codeine.

I do know that codeine often makes people more nauseated than hydrocodone
does and that most doctors believe that hydrocodone preparations are more
potent and better at relieving pain than codeine is.  Hydrocodone comes in
many many forms and many names and it is my understanding that different
preparations of hydrocodone are among the top 10 prescriptions written in
the
U.S.

Hydrocodoone bitartrate may be called vicodin, vidone, norco, lortab,
lorcet,
zydone, hycotuss, hydone, and many other names, read the label, some have
things added in addition to Tylenol, some have no Tylenol like hycotuss
which is
mainly a cough medicine.  Watch out for the Tylenol, some preparations of
hydrocodone like lorcet plus may have as much as 650 mg of Tylenol per
tablet.

That is an awful lot of Tylenol and Tylenol (apap or acetaminophen) can be
very liver
toxic.  4000 mg or less is recommended as the maximum daily dose under
short term therapeutic circumstances, any more than that and you can cause
major
and totally non recoverable damage to your liver.  Long term therapy with
preparations
of anything that have Tylenol in it have yet to be properly studied but
there are many
people who have been taking two extra strength Tylenol tablets many times
per day
for years who have no liver left.

In my opinion it is a poison, supposedly it is supposed to help the
medication work
better but there has never been an evidenced based double blind study that I
have seen
that shows that benefit.  It has great properties to reduce fevers, but so
does Motrin,
frankly I think it is poison unless used very very carefully for short
periods.

Just take my opinion for what it is worth, it is a lay persons rant and
again, it has been
years since I took a graduate level course in pharmacology and even longer
since I took
organic chemistry, but that is my opinion.  Talk to your doctor AND your
pharmacist
about what is working for you.  Pharmacists are very well trained
practitioners and they
are not just pill counters who guard the supply until they get an order from
a doctor to
dispense something, they can tell you plenty to help you and best of all,
they don't
just rely on their own experience and training but they experience of every
patient
(to me a pharmacist has patients not customers), that consult with them.

You are not just paying for a medication when you go to a pharmacy, you are
paying
for and entitled to a consultation and I for one take them up on it every
chance I get.