Apologies if this is in the wrong area. My search fu failed me.
Had terrible headaches as a child and was prescribed Cafergot PB which I seem to recall working. Flash forward almost fifty years, same headaches returning, asked my MD to prescribe, she did, but the pharmacy said not available.
Is this a victim of planned obsolence, the war on drugs, or…?
Any ideas on sourcing?
Thanks for looking.
A quick Google search shows that this drug available from many sources online. Most places advertising it for 78¢ a pill. I apologize as I didn’t look to see if it is an OTC drug now, but good news is you can get it!
I missed the edit window. I went back to look and the pharmacies advertising the drug you’re looking for are Canadian. I have ordered from Canada before, very simple. You fax them your prescription and you will get your meds in about a week. Here is a link to one of them: beresexecutive.com/cafergot.html Give it a try if you can’t find it here. Hope this helps.
It’s more a victim of being a drug combo with a huge level of risk, and nothing more in the way of benefits than more current migraine drugs. In other words, it’s obsolete, but not planned that way - they’ve just developed safer drugs in the last 50 years that work just as well (which is to say, not very well. Migraines suck.)
It’s no longer available in the US. You may have some luck with a compounding pharmacy - a pharmacy that mixes chemicals to make their own custom “compounded” drugs to doctor’s prescriptions - but I’m not even sure about that, honestly. You can find a compounding pharmacy here: http://www.compoundingpharmacies.org/
It appears from a quick Google search that it may still be available in Canada.
I would be very careful buying this from some online seller shilling it for 78¢ a pill. This drug is a combination of ergot, belladona, caffeine and pentobarbatol. None of those taken alone is something you want to mess with - three of the four could kill you in the wrong dose. (Caffeine is the least dangerous, I grant you.) A combo of them made in someone’s homemade lab could be deadly. If you can verify it’s a legitimate licensed Canadian pharmacy, that’s cool, but otherwise you’ll probably end up with a jar of No-Doz with a new label.
Belladonna and barbiturates have rather fallen out of favor for treatment of migraines in recent decades, so it’s extremely unlikely anyone will be interested in putting them into a combination pill these days.
Ergotamine and caffeine are still quite useful, and combination pills containing both those ingredients had been available until the past few months, when some sort of supply problem obtaining ergotamine apparently arose, and the current manufacturers of that combo put out notices that supplies had run out.
Thanks folks, forgot to mention I’m allergic–to buying “prescriptions” online that is. Have a call in to the doc, we’re not even sure these are vascular, or migraine, or whatever they’re called this week.
Thought we’d try this out.
On to plan B whatever that may be.
Well, plan B is Ergomar, the newer and much more expensive cousin of the older, cheaper cafergot. Apparently FDA in 2007 made companies file a NDA (new drug application I think) for making the same drugs, effectively wiping out the old guys and expensivizing (I know, not a real word) a new batch of the same class of chemicals. So obsolescence, and government/industry planned at that.
I have ordered from “Canadian” pharmacies on a couple occasions, both times my packages were shipped from India.
OP, can you take firocet? It’s what I take for migraines.
Ergot works on the blood vessels covering the brain where the migraine occurs. It’s extremely effective. It also can cause rebound headaches. You take it too frequently, and you get a headache. Ergot can also cause nasty gastrointestinal disturbances as well. Migraines are noted for accompanying nausea and sometimes vomiting. When you add diarrhea to the mix, you’re in for a miserable time.
Fioricet is acetominophen and a mild barbiturate. It cannot actually abort the physical cause of the migraine, so it treats the resulting pain.
Cafergot has essentially been replaced in the pharmaceutical world by the class of TRIPTAN drugs. Imitrex (sumatriptan) was the first. Triptans are unique in that they work ONLY on migraines, no other type of headache or pain. And they can be taken at any point of the headache life. Ergot will only work at the very beginning of a headache. Triptans can cause rebound headaches, but the side effects of triptans are much less violent than the side effects of ergot.
Too much ergot and your fingers and toes can fall off from gangrene.
And it’s interesting to note that ergot is related to LSD.
~VOW
Dord, will check that out thx. Ergomar is just what my MD prescribed based on our (surprisingly wide-ranging and dare I say freewheeling chat)
Vow, thanks, and yes, I’d known about this relation to LSD and found it amusing that our family MD who prescribed this commended me in a later unrelated visit for not taking those kinds of drugs!
I don’t think I get these things often enough to worry about ergotism, habituation, or rebound effects, and despite having grown up in the sixties, have cleared a half century.
I’m not seriously health challenged–though I suppose i ought to be, all things considered.
My father takes imitrex shots and it works wonders for him.
(Also Firoicet has caffeine in it)
Have many of your patients expressed preference for ergot preparations over the triptans?
I must say that perhaps 10-15% of mine report tolerating ergot just fine (along with getting decent headache relief) while get nasty side-effects from triptans. Meanwhile I’ve had very few complain of ergot side-effects (assuming proper dosing) but rather state it just doesn’t work.
I’ll miss ergostat and cafergot if they go away. It filled a niche that triptans didn’t always cover.
To Qagdop:
No patients, just moi. I’ve been a migraineur since my pre-teen years. I’ve read everything I could get my hands on about migraines. My experience with ergot and triptan are personal. After taking Cafergot for years and years, it finally ended up making me sicker than the headache itself. I was thrilled when the triptans were developed.
Unfortunately, I also have experience with migraines because my husband suffers from them, as well. While mine are the common variety, his are full-blown classic, with aura symptoms that have been frightening at times. At the age of 56, he began to suffer from seizures. Two years later, he developed Parkinson’s. I cannot get the neurologist to say one way or another, but I’m telling you: they are all inter-related. The symptoms he suffers when he is having a seizure is IDENTICAL to the behavior he sometimes exhibits with a migraine. And the Parkinson’s and migraines intensify each other.
As you might expect, both kids have migraines, too. When they were growing up, I’d get everybody’s Imitrex prescriptions filled once a month. Then I’d open all of those created-by-demons-in-Perdition blister packs and dump the pills in a bowl. We’d help ourselves like it was popcorn.
The son rarely has a full-blown migraine these days. He’s mostly occupied with plain old tension headaches. The daughter seems to have inherited the worst of my migraines and her daddy’s migraines. She’s made her migraine specialist aware of her daddy’s current problems, but the specialist doesn’t seem to care.
I hope to God she dodges that bullet.
~VOW
To Dord:
Yes, i forgot to mention the caffeine in Fioricet.
For years and years, my standard prescriptions for migraines were Cafergot and Fiorinal. The Fiorinal is the same stuff as Fioricet, only aspirin instead of acetominophen. The general guidelines were as follows: if you feel a headache coming on, take the Cafergot. If you miss the window of opportunity with the Cafergot (it doesn’t work once the pain hits), then take the Fiorinal.
Imitrex is a blessing, because it can be taken at ANY stage of the headache.
When Imitrex first came available, it was in injection form. My insurance didn’t cover it then, and I paid the out of pocket cost of about $35 per shot.
I’d be half-dead before I’d finally say, “Okay, I’ll try the Imitrex.”
~VOW
Qagdop: “reported nasty side-effects from triptans” which specific side-effects, or just generally the ones already published in studies?
It’s pretty cool that imitrex generics exists (since 2008).. God I hated the old costs! :smack: