I used to work with a woman who graduated in the early 1970s, and where she lived, paregoric (which is no longer available, period) was available behind-the-counter with a signature, kind of like pseudoephedrine is now. It contains opium, and she had a customer, a nurse no less, who was purchasing it regularly. She questioned the woman about this, and she said that she would give her baby paregoric every night, so it would sleep through the night, and an enema every morning. :eek: :smack: :mad: Not only would the child not have any kind of normal bowel function, don’t bother with a college fund; just save up for the psychiatrist bills!
Hey, we have the same sobriety date. Hard to believe it’s been over twenty years; it doesn’t feel like it.
Now that is some nasty tasting stuff, kind of like dirty bananas. I took it once as a kid for diarrhea.
Yes, yes, I mentioned this earlier in this thread, about 7 years ago now.
What a loooooong strange trip it’s been. 
“Dirty bananas” is an excellent description of its smell! Its other name was “camphorated tincture of opium” and its unpleasant taste was deliberate, to reduce its abuse potential, I guess.
I’ve been told that lots of parents used to rub it on babies’ gums when they were teething. My guess is that it was the camphor which produced the local anesthetic effect.
Apart from the issue of controlled substances, isn’t a pharmacist supposed to be the the expert on drugs and their action in the human body? That is, as I understand it, he or she should know more than the doctor about this, so it’s part of their professional responsibility to question and advise to the doc about a prescription, if it’s called for.
Having said that, from my observation as a patient and customer it seems that the most important factor is the professional relationship and trust between the doctor and the pharmacist.
Your average Pharmacist has a great deal of knowledge about drug interactions, effects, and side-effects. Far more than physicians do. But most pharmacists don’t have the opportunity to work with the patient right in front of them for up close examination and lab study. So a doc who knows his specialty and is working with his particular specialty’s drugs will usually be more clued into clinical effects than a pharmacist for a specific patient.
Of course, not all docs are that up to date. And primary care docs like me have to work with such a wide variety of drugs and interactions that it’s hard to keep up. Hence a heavy reliance on pharmacist input and cooperation.
It’s getting more and more rare for a physician to have an ongoing relationship with a pharmacist, given how many different drug stores are out there, all the telepharmacy going on, and the rising use of mail order pharmacies to fill prescriptions. Unless a physician is hospital-based, or works in a closed system (like I do), the chance to develop such a relationship is getting smaller and smaller.
Pharmacists vary in quality as much as physicians. In the last few months, I’ve interviewed over a dozen pharmacists, looking for a pharmacy supervisor for my organization. When asked about drug interactions, about half the pharmacists knew their stuff about what shouldn’t mix with what; the other half said “I rely on my computer software to catch problematic drug interactions”. Which is fine up to a point given how many esoteric interactions there are out there.
But a pharmacist who doesn’t know a fundamental fact (such as an asthmatic generally shouldn’t take propranolol) without a computer reminding her of it isn’t someone I’ll hire.
You know it’s amazing how most comments about this are either addicts trying to scam or pharmacists trying to explain and defend why they need to stop it but yet, all the years of experience and schooling and experience on the addicts side, I see a lot of statements made based off of opinions made from here say or what they “heard”. I mean at least be honest both addicts and pharmacists both know symptoms of withdrawal how long they are, the pharmacist can tell the difference between a junkie scamming fake scripts and someone in pain needing the meds. The truth is people can have other conditions or just that look to them that makes Them rough around the edges and look sketchy but every single person prescribed narcotics has a very high chance of becoming an addict and every single person period after let’s say 2 weeks for sake of everyone’s body metabolizes different. Every single person coming to fill that script after a month is physically dependent and by definition addicted because if their script just stopped what would they do. Tell the dr something’s wrong and don’t feel good or they would do what they never have in their life and buy it on the street. So to sit there and pretend to be investigators and that it takes so much training to spot it all they are doing is profiling based off of personal bias and opinion because every person. Prescribed narcotics is physically addicted after time. That being said because someone looks rough and they get their script denied, what if that denial causes them to suffer not sleep be in excruciating pain just for the doc to rewrite it. Addict or not people deserve to get equal treatment whether they can hide the addiction better or gave up in life. Patients are supposed to be treated for their ailment period, not discriminated or given secondary treatment because they may or may not be an addict which is no way to tell just by looking at them unless fresh blood is leaking out the track marks because even healed track marks could be old. At what point does playing investigator to if The person basically deserves to be treated properly sway away from verifying a script. If it’s real the dr verified it and it’s legit then who is anyone besides an addiction. Trained specialists to decide whether a person is scamming or not because not 1 single addict needs a pharmacy to get drugs if an addict even goes to the doctor at all because of being treated like trash and a lower class of person, trust be me being an addict if I’m going to the hospital or dr period I’m on my way out and I really need the help and just wanna heal and be on my way I don’t wanna hear how I have a past with narcotics so I shouldn’t be getting schedule ll meds even though I could have reconstructive surgery on my face from it being shattered in 8+ places yet the validity of the need for pain relief is still questioned when The same pharmacist causing problems making it hard to fill can get a wisdom tooth pulled and get Vicodin and fill it with no concern that it’s very addictive and that they will be dependent by the time the script is up and could turn to an addict , knowing this they still fill it because they know it will help and make them feel good and believe it won’t happen to them. To fill it anyways knowing the risks is drug seeking behavior because they know it won’t help much more than 800 Motrin or Tylenol 3. They fill it because it’s a legal excuse to take Vicodin for a few days. We need to stop living these hypocritical ways and pretending that people with addictions don’t deserve the same as everyone else when statistically speaking most of the big time fraud crimes are committed by sober people who socially drink and are just greedy and can get away with it. The biggest crimes in America were not comitted by the junkie down the street but by the people who justify and excuse discrimination and treatment of addicts because it’s easy to do. Verify the script and fill it check for mistakes do your job don’t t try and be an addiction counselor or psychologist and diagnose an addiction by the look of someone . That’s exactly why people turn away from in person places because of that. I stayed home with a 103 fever almost a week and was dying when I finally went to the ER all because I didn’t have to energy to explain that I was not there to get drugs yes I was in pain but wanted help. I shouldn’t have to be told that I am going to get weaker medicine because of my past because like I said addicts can get whatever they want on the street and they can get it into the hospital undetected and every addict knows the narcotics are weak as hell anyways compared so the only people trying to cash fake scripts are seeking money maybe to buy drugs with it but how many non addict drs and pharmacists got arrested for committing the same fraud. Do ur jobs stop making people feel like they should not bother getting help it’s pathetic how judgmental it is