Dear Pharmacy Customer

[Kogarashi]

One of those controlled painkillers makes me so disoriented I can barely function. When I had my wisdom teeth pulled, I was told I HAD to take them. It was a couple days before I managed to come up with the idea to read the label on the bottle. The second I saw the words "as needed" the rest got flushed - I don't believe I'd needed them since the first night.

And stuff like this is why, the few times I've been on anything stronger than acetominophen/ibuprofen, I conciously wean myself off the big ones ASAP. Of course, I've only had them so far for recovery from getting my wisdom teeth pulled and from delivering my first baby by C-section. Basically, the only two times I've had proper surgery. I didn't even get the strong stuff when I delivered Baby #2, because she came the normal way. "As needed" for the strong stuff is when the pain is unbearable and the ibuprofen (my preferred painkiller) isn't cutting it.

Other than that, I've got the meds easy too. Birth control when I'm not actively trying to get pregnant, and ibuprofen when I get a headache.

[Sapphire Silk]

People don't believe me when I tell them I can't take ibuprofen....because it gives me a headache.

I believe you. I've seen far too many people have oddball reactions to medications . . . or had them myself . . . to discount anything

[Pagan]

I believe you. I've seen far too many people have oddball reactions to medications . . . or had them myself . . . to discount anything

I got an oddball reaction that never fails to get a double-take. Promethazine is used for nausea, right? Guess what, I throw it up.

[peony]

Flushing meds

I'm a long time lurker who registered just to ask this -- Please consider not flushing unwanted meds. Mix them with something disgusting - coffee grounds, nasty leftovers, diapers, for example. I'd really rather all these drugs not find their way into the water supply we all must drink.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I SOOOOO badly want a placebo.

Where do we get these placebos?

Maybe there's some in this truck!

[Food Lady]

This whole thread is making me glad I have no prescriptions, and that ibuprofen takes care of most of my pain (actually works better than Vicodin).

[Sapphire Silk]

I got an oddball reaction that never fails to get a double-take. Promethazine is used for nausea, right? Guess what, I throw it up.

Have you ever had it IV or by suppository? If so, did it work? It's not uncommon for people to vomit anti-nausea medications before they have a chance to actually work.

I'm a long time lurker who registered just to ask this -- Please consider not flushing unwanted meds. Mix them with something disgusting - coffee grounds, nasty leftovers, diapers, for example. I'd really rather all these drugs not find their way into the water supply we all must drink.

Mix unwanted medications with kitty litter and throw them in the regular trash. Or, wait for the Sheriff's Dept or local pharmacies to hold a medications drop off, and get rid of unwanted medications then.

This whole thread is making me glad I have no prescriptions, and that ibuprofen takes care of most of my pain (actually works better than Vicodin).

Tylenol (acetaminophen) and Motrin (ibuprofen) actually work better than narcotics for specific types of pain, a fact many people don't realize. Because they are over the counter, some people dismiss them as "weaker" than narcotics, which is actually not true. It depends a lot of the type of pain.

I'd much rather take Tylenol for a toothache than ibuprophen. It works better. For joint/muscle pain ibuprofen works better, ditto for menstrual cramps.

After my gall bladder surgery, I needed a narcotic for a few days.

I never take narcotics for migraines. They don't work at all. At best they make me dopey so I sleep through the pain . . . and I get a rebound migraine when I wake up.

You can get pain from overuse syndrome . . . the pain returns worse than before you took the drug (any drug), and the only cure is to withdraw from all medications, tough it out, and let the pain resolve on its own. Heat/cold and biofeedback helps with this kind of pain.

[Gizmo]

For anyone disposing of unwanted meds in the UK : Take them back to your chemist. They have safe disposal methods and will accept any unwanted/expired meds. (Not sure if this is the same in the US too)

[Kogarashi]

I believe you. I've seen far too many people have oddball reactions to medications . . . or had them myself . . . to discount anything

I have a friend who is knocked out near-cold by caffeine, and kept up all night by the drowsy formula for Sudafed. She hates it.

[Sapphire Silk]

For anyone disposing of unwanted meds in the UK : Take them back to your chemist. They have safe disposal methods and will accept any unwanted/expired meds. (Not sure if this is the same in the US too)

Not in the US. It is actually illegal for a pharmacy to take meds back unless the store is doing a special disposal program.

[Pagan]

[QUOTE=Panacea;873149]Have you ever had it IV or by suppository? If so, did it work? It's not uncommon for people to vomit anti-nausea medications before they have a chance to actually work./QUOTE]

Only took it once as a syrup when I had pneumonia. I haven't been in a hospital as a patient since I was 13 months old, so no IV. And I don't do suppositories....that's an exit only.

[QUOTE=Panacea;873149]Mix unwanted medications with kitty litter and throw them in the regular trash. Or, wait for the Sheriff's Dept or local pharmacies to hold a medications drop off, and get rid of unwanted medications then./QUOTE]

That wouldn't work so well with pills and then I'd also have most of a bag of kitty litter with no use for it.

[Sapphire Silk]

Only took it once as a syrup when I had pneumonia. I haven't been in a hospital as a patient since I was 13 months old, so no IV. And I don't do suppositories....that's an exit only.

I hear ya there!

[Shalom]

Not in the US. It is actually illegal for a pharmacy to take meds back unless the store is doing a special disposal program.

I guess it depends on the jurisdiction. In my states of licensure, it's not illegal to take meds back; what is illegal is to return them to stock, so if we do take them back we have to throw them out. (In practice they go with the expired stuff to a so-called "reverse distributor" who then do who-knows-what with them. For all I know or care they might be selling them to third world nations.)

We tell people that it's illegal because it saves arguments. Plenty of customers wind up with meds that they don't need/want. Maybe the doctor changed their medication and they still have a week left on the old one, or they discovered that there's a cheaper medication for the same condition, or a cheaper pharmacy elsewhere, or they heard Oprah say that this medicine will make hair sprout from their ears or something. Could be they filled an antibiotic and never took it, and now they're not sick anymore. (Although they're more likely to hoard it in case they "have that again", even though every infection is different and they don't all respond to the same antibiotics, but that's a rant for another time.) In any case, they often bring their medication back and try to get a refund on it. The chains will sometimes cave and give them a refund just to shut them up, and eat the loss, but it's the pharmacy manager's decision. (As a floater for the chains, I wouldn't accept meds back for refund at all; I'd tell them to come back when the manager is there. At an independent pharmacy, my word is law and they're out of luck.)

So why can't I take it back? Well, how do I know what happened to them in the interim? Maybe you didn't trust my count, so you poured them out on your kitchen table and fondled them one at a time. Maybe some rolled off onto the floor and under the radiator. Maybe you spilled them into your pocketbook. I'm sure any of us here can come up with a dozen scenarios as to why it might not be a great idea to take medicines that were out of the control of the pharmacist. I've even asked would-be returners, "Would you take a medicine that someone else had in their house?" Of course they wouldn't, but they're not worried about other people.

I often get, "But I never even opened the bag!" Even if you're telling the truth about that, I have no way of knowing how it was stored. Maybe it got left in a hot car for a couple days. I generally tell people who are picking up expensive stuff that once they are out the door with it, they're stuck with it, and they'd better decide now whether they want/can afford it.

Controlled substances might be another story; I'd have to look up the laws regarding that. I do know that the DEA no longer accepts narcotics for disposal, and non-institutional dispensers aren't allowed to dispose of them ourselves. (Hospitals may destroy narcotics on-site, in the presence of a pharmacist and one other licensed professional such as an MD or an RN, but we retail guys don't have that option.)

Peony's right, by the way. Municipal sewage systems aren't set up to remove pharmaceuticals from waste water, so whatever drugs you flush will eventually make its way back into the water. This isn't such a problem for us coastal residents, as once it gets into the ocean, it's so far diluted that nobody but a homeopathic practitioner will notice it's there, but for those inland who use septic systems and reclaim the water, eventually this may become a problem. Read this for some details, and remember that was published ten years ago.

(Although, to play 's advocate for a moment, lots of medications, including many antibiotics, are eliminated unchanged in the urine. How is swallowing a penicillin tablet in the morning, and then pishing it out eight hours later, any different from just dropping the tablet straight into the toilet? Are we gonna have to start hooking up our urinals to hazmat disposal facilities?)

[Sapphire Silk]

Controlled substances might be another story; I'd have to look up the laws regarding that. I do know that the DEA no longer accepts narcotics for disposal, and non-institutional dispensers aren't allowed to dispose of them ourselves. (Hospitals may destroy narcotics on-site, in the presence of a pharmacist and one other licensed professional such as an MD or an RN, but we retail guys don't have that option.)

I doubt hospitals have much of a disposal problem with controlled substances. They probably get used before they expire.

In my hospice job, if a patient dies and the family asks me to dispose of the controlled substances, I have to flush them down the toilet, and then document who witnessed my doing so. Not the best system IMHO. Glad it doesn't come up often.

(Although, to play 's advocate for a moment, lots of medications, including many antibiotics, are eliminated unchanged in the urine. How is swallowing a penicillin tablet in the morning, and then pishing it out eight hours later, any different from just dropping the tablet straight into the toilet? Are we gonna have to start hooking up our urinals to hazmat disposal facilities?)

Huh. Good point . . . that never occurred to me!

Makes me wonder if that contributes to the rise of drug resistant bacteria.

[LadyAndreca]

I'm a long time lurker who registered just to ask this -- Please consider not flushing unwanted meds. Mix them with something disgusting - coffee grounds, nasty leftovers, diapers, for example. I'd really rather all these drugs not find their way into the water supply we all must drink.

I know this NOW. I didn't when I was nineteen.

Funny story--last fall I cleaned out the medicine cabinet and cleaned out all the expired everything that was in there (plus the penicillin my hubby was hoarding). I threw everything into a cup of water to dissolve it, then poured it into the bin we scoop the used clumping cat litter in, then covered that with more cat litter. My hubby found out what I did, and noticed that some of the liquid leaked out of the liner into the bin.

He was so freaked out about dissolved aspirin and sudafed that he made me SCRUB AND DISINFECT THE BIN THAT WAS *ONLY* USED FOR DIRTY LITTER before he would touch it again!