Ah, maybe I did do the touchpad thing. I was thinking paper, but I could have forgotten about signing on the touchpad.
The articles I’ve read suggest painkillers like acetaminophen or ibuprofen are still somewhat effective up to 5 years after the expiry date.
They aren’t banned. At least, pseudoephedrine isn’t. They are kept “behind the counter” , and you can only buy small quantities at a time. And you have to let the pharmacist record you ID. But i stick up when I’m not sick so i have it around when i have a cold. We have a few blister packs in the bathroom.
It is illegal in some countries. It’s a serious drug offense in Japan, I’m told, and i would never have smuggled it in had i known. Fortunately, it’s rare for customs to examine the tiny quantities of drugs in an old lady’s travel bag (that are obviously for personal use.) and i successfully smuggled them back home, unused.
There are definitely individual differences. I can’t take dextromethorphan. I took it once (admittedly at a prescription dose, at the advise of my doctor) and had a really unpleasant overdose reaction. I’ve been taking codeine ever since. It’s getting harder to get, but i don’t take it very often, and it keeps forever.
Each drug is different. But i don’t bother to track the expiration date of ibuprofen, it works fine for a long time.
The old codeine that came in alcohol really did keep forever. It got stronger over time as the liquid evaporated. Now, when the bottle is half empty, i fill it the rest of the way with whiskey so bacteria won’t grow in it. (And take two spoonfuls instead of one.)
Aspirin smells like vinegar when it goes bad.
My antacids are fragile and go bad about when they “expire”. Also, if i keep them in a pill case in my pocket or another warm place, i throw them away and replace them with ones kept cooler after a couple of weeks.
Thanks again for the tips about pseudoephedrine! I never would’ve known. At Safeway, they asked for my ID but I didn’t have to sign anything. It did suck having to wait in line with all the prescription pickups though. But at least I have the good stuff now for the next cold!
I didn’t even know this was a class of drugs (access-controlled “behind the counter” drugs that don’t require a prescription but are hidden away). Are there any other magic drugs like that, with extra potency just waiting for a customer to speak to a pharmacist to unlock?
Pseudoephedrine is the big one, as far as something of general use. And, as noted, it was a “normal” OTC drug until fairly recently, when its use in manufacturing meth became an issue; it’s not something which was placed behind the counter because of its particular effectiveness.
At least at the pharmacies where I shop, it’s not a “secret” at all: in the cold and allergy aisle, they stock cards for the various sizes (and for generic versus Sudafed), which you have to take to the pharmacy counter to trade in for an actual package.
Thanks everyone for the corrections to my “banning” of epehdrine & pseudoephedrine.
This
suggests that one way for @Reply to learn about any other behind the counter non-prescription drugs is to just check out the variety of meds where the only thing on the shelves are the inventory cards and they have to ask the pharmacists for the real goods.
Some of those cards in at least some stores are about anti-theft, not sorta-controlled drug status. But it’s a start.
There are no such cards in my pharmacy.
Cigarettes used to be sold that way, but i didn’t think pharmacies tend to stock them any more. They and the lottery tickets are behind the counter at my supermarket, though.
CVS, as a corporation, decided that selling cigarettes and tobacco products was diametrically opposed to selling health products, so they stopped doing so in 2014.
AFAICT, Walgreens and Rite-Aid (the other two major U.S. pharmacy chains) still allow the sale of them at a corporate level, though some localities now have laws which forbid all pharmacies from selling cigarettes.
Often the best buy.
Yep, I try never to buy name brand drugs if I can help it. Never had an issue with generics.
As for the cards, I’ve seen them in bigger city pharmacies, but not here. Our pharmacies barely manage to stay alive at all, and entire aisles are frequently apocalyptically disheveled or empty. It’s a wonder they’re still open at all…
The ones inside Costco, Safeway, etc. seem fine, but the former Rite Aids, Walgreens, CVS, etc. are all dying. Not really sure what happened there.
IMO …
Amazon moved into pharmacy in a big way. Both OTC & prescription filling.
Plus once both Walgreens & CVS owned “mail order” (now online website) pharmacies for chronic meds delivered in 90-day supplies, they had severe channel conflict and essentially hung their stores out to dry.
They may both turn into the next Sears where the real estate portfolio under their stores is more valuable than the operating stores themselves.
Which one is Walgreens?
Hmm, I had no idea they could fill prescriptions too. But that makes sense.
The US model of retail pharmacies always seemed strange to me. Where I grew up, you just pick up your prescriptions in the same clinic/hospital where you got your treatment. You go from the doctor to another waiting room, wait 10-15 min for your drugs, and go home with them in the same visit.
The system we have here where you have to carry some sacred piece of paper (or maybe they fax/call it in now) to an altogether separate business in a different part of town and then wait hours for an overworked pharmacist to fill it on behalf of some doctor they’ve never worked with… it seems quite inefficient and strange (not to mention expensive)…
And then there’s that whole GoodRx thing, where a coupon can save big bucks off an Rx. It’s really strange.
Meh. Just more privatized healthcare gripes.
What do you mean by “which one”? Are you asking what Walgreens is? It’s just a regional/national pharmacy like CVS: Walgreens - Wikipedia
I have trouble telling them apart from CVS or RiteAid or any of the other ones. They all have the same look and feel and purpose, and I usually can’t tell which one I’m in even when I’m in it…
Assuming you meant which “mail order” outfit is owned by Walgreens, I was under the impression OptumRX is.
Upon further review to answer your question, OptumRX is actually owned by UHC. I got the impression they were co-owned when I had my employee medical coverage that seemed to switch every couple years between Walgreens and Optum vs CVS & Caremark. Caremark is definitely CVS’s captive “mail order” pharmacy.
Sorry to mislead.
I did mean “which big drug intermediary in associated with Walgreens”. I know that CVS and caremark are owned by the same group, but i didn’t think any of the big drug middlemen owned Walgreens, and i thought it was one of the independents being forced out by the big three.
Is that a different thing from the mail-order service, like are you referring to some other part of the supply chain (further up in the process)?
For mail-order, there is https://www.walgreensmailservice.com/home
Walgreens owns AllianceRX. (The industry term for mail-order pharmacy services like that, Carermark, Prime Therapeutics, etc. is “Pharmacy Benefit Manager,” or PBM.)
I think they just renamed to Walgreens Mail Service (and Specialty Pharmacy): https://alliancerxwp.com/
You are correct. It looks like AllianceRX may have been a collaboration between Walgreens and Prime Therapeutics, but they have since gone solo on this.
Thanks, “pharmacy benefit manager” is the word i couldn’t come up with. And they are much more than “mail order pharmacies”, they are a major component of our our healthcare dysfunction. They are also doing a lot to put your local pharmacy out of business.