Tomorrow I see the doctor and I have been thinking of asking for a prescription for clonazepam (Klonopin/Rivotril)* for restless legs/as a sleep aid when I fly (which is sometimes a lot - I spent about 50 hours of the last 7 days on an airplane). I know doctors aren’t keen on patients telling them what prescription they want, so I may not even get it. But let’s assume for the moment that I do. I will be seeking an extremely small dose for occasional use only - if they want to limit me to a total supply of 20 mg, no refills, that’s fine.
This is at an Indonesian health facility but my American insurance (by Cigna) does apply to my medical care here and the clinic submits the insurance forms directly. So, if I actually got prescribed Rivotril, an American insurance company might end up with records about it. Would they potentially use this information against me in some way in the future, do you think?
A lot of Dopers have taken anti-depressants/anti-anxiety meds/sedatives under a doctor’s orders. Have you had any negative consequences as a result, ie difficulty getting insurance later?
Thanks.
(*) This is a drug not unlike Valium but a little bit more toward the muscle-relaxant end of the spectrum and slightly less toward the mood-altering. But, it IS an anti-anxiety medication that people abuse from time to time.
This is a bit of a third-hand story as I was never directly involved with the situation, but I did hear about it a lot while it was going on…
When my (now late) grandmother was having minor memory problems in her eighties, her doctor prescribed her a then-newish drug used to treat alzheimers patients. She tried it for a short time, like a week or something, and mutually decided with her doctor that it wasn’t necessary. A few years later when she went to apply to live in an assisted-living facility, they claimed that because she was on this drug they could identify her as having a pre-existing mental health impairment (keep in mind she was never diagnosed with alzheimers or dementia) which meant she had to pay thousands of dollars extra for her apartment, and if she ever had to move to the nursing-home part of the building (which most people had to, at some point, until the end of their lives) she would have to pay some ridiculous amount more - in the hundreds of dollars a day if I’m not mistaken - than someone who had not been on such a drug. Even with protests by the original prescribing doctor, they wouldn’t budge.
It may not apply to you, but it’s something that anybody applying for a government clearance must report as part of the QNSP (Questionair for National Security Position). Depending on the drug, it may or may not be a big deal, but the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) would probably need to talk to your doctor about it.
Thank you Rachel Rage and Santo Rugger … you have illustrated exactly the concerns that worried me.
And now, the end of the story: My appointment time arrived, and I figured what the heck, all Americans take something these days, and I might as well ask about it, since he probably won’t give it to me anyway.
The doctor initially did not impress me. It was pretty clear he didn’t even know what I was talking about (he suggested calcium and pain killers for leg cramps, which are totally different from restless legs). I left without a prescription for anything that would help restless legs, and figured that was the end of it.
Then he phoned me an hour later, saying he had looked up restless legs, and the current drug of choice for restless legs is … could I have misunderstood … Rohypnol. Before I could say “thanks but no thanks” he went on to add that Rohypnol is not available in Indonesia, and a second choice is Rivotril. Ergo, he would prescribe that for me.
So my prescription awaits me. Hopefully I won’t regret it.
I think you mis-heard. I’m guessing he said Ropinirole (marketed as Requip). Rohypnol is the “date rape drug,” which I suppose would also stop twitchy legs.
I’ve never had any problems in my life from being on anti-anxiety meds, but then I don’t need a security clearance or anything like that, either. My boss also knows what I take, and she doesn’t care, as long as I can perform my job.
Although I have no evidence of this, I applied 6 months ago for the JET program, a government program to teach English in Japan, and was rejected. I think this was heavily because of my SSRI prescription and Japan’s backward stance on psychopharmaceuticals.
If you apply for individual health insurance it may be a problem. * Underwriters are skittish about antidepressants and will often rate individual policies up, exclude services/prescriptions for a particular diagnosis forever, or deny coverage altogether. The ones in my experience don’t like anything that even looks like mental illness.
Many individual insurance companies only ask for health history for the last 5 years, and prescription information for the last 12 months, though, so it isn’t necessarily a lifelong underwriting problem, assuming it doesn’t turn into long term use.
Of course, outside the US I don’t have any friggin’ idea what I’m talking about, and insurance law varies greatly by state.
*Group health insurance is a different critter entirely; not nearly so difficult WRT acceptance and rates. (I cut out a bunch of qualifiers and details since they tend to be a confusing PITA.)
I’m sure you are right, that sounds like it. The similarity in sound to Rohypnol is unfortunate … I suspect I’m not the only person who backed away in horror when they heard the name.
I don’t claim to be an expert on these sorts of things, but I do hold an FAA medical and I have also recently applied for a job requiring a security clearance. A big issue with the Feds is not only what you take but why - if, for example, you take a drug for a month after both your parents and all your siblings are killed in a horrible freak accident because you are traumatized, but you get your crap together and no longer need the drug, that is quite a different matter than if you have a chronic, long-term condition. Regardless, if you truthfully state you have taken certain medications (and I do advise you to be truthful) they will ask additional questions.
That is different than health insurers who may, indeed, screw you over because you took a drug just once.
Actually, it would. Like the Klonopin the OP mentioned, Rohypnol is a benzodiazepine, albeit a very, very strong one. The doctor may have been talking about that after all, since he said that drug was unavailable in Indonesia, but from what little I can find online, it appears (don’t quote me on this) that Ropinirole is sold there.
I am a successfully treated Bipolar Type I. The biggest problem for me is that I can’t get a Private’s License which was a life goal even though I can fly all I want with another licensed pilot which I do. I can get another type of pilot’s license for two seat planes and that is good enough for me. My entire family knows about this and I blocked it from my mind because I simply don’t care other than the occasional conversational hassle.
Every other person in my family on both sides in bipolar so it is nothing new. I have to do what I need to because the risk of spiraling down into severe life consequences and then suicide is too great and it has already happened in the family a few times. As long as I am doing OK for myself and my daughters, any treatment is fine with me as long as it has been effective and that has been the case for a number of years.
Intriguing, I’ll ask the pharmacist when I get my Rivotril. (Though this thread will doubtless be long dead by then as I doubt I’ll get the prescription filled for several days.)
:smack:
Well, at least you wound up getting the scrip you wanted anyway!
My WAG with Klonopin is that unless there’s a pattern of having been prescribed it long-term, it wouldn’t be an issue. There are legitimate short-term uses that shouldn’t stigmatize anyone. I had a neurologist try to talk me into using it for my restless legs (which would have required using it daily, quite different from your one-off need for it).
The FAA would rather an raging example of untreated depression with anger management issues hanging on with white knuckles through his mothers death and his nasty divorce at the controls of your plane than one on mild anti-depressants… At the level of an ATR rating… Go figure (airline transport rating)