The Gaming Den

So, my sis lives in INdia and her husband travels often between the states and India. Some of my medication of which I take anywhere between 8 and 10 has a co-pay between 50 and 100$ and generics aren't available. For some of these, I consider myself lucky that my sis is able to find the Indian generic from the pharmacies down there.

Sometimes, she has trouble because some of the different varieties of the same medications has some of the pharmacists troubled. so she goes from pharmacy to pharmacy until she finds one who is knowledgeable rather than one who just got a job.

So two questions.

* Do any of you jump through strange loops like these for medication?

* Is there a way/site out there that lists out the different names for your medications in different countries?

Yes.

Wikipedia.

Even so, you have to remember that tolerances are different in different countries, as well as who's watching over the shoulder. You might wish to look at bribery rates in any country you're thinking to buy from, as it's a social malaise.

And even if you can get generics, remember that they might be a different molecule, might have a different carrier, etc than the ones you're used to, and may have different effects. Some digest faster, slower, break down in light, some people don't react to stereo-isomers and some people do better with them than others.

It's kinda like that question, "Would you do meth if it were legal?" The correct answer is, "WTF, it is legal, it's called 'pseudoephedrine', and no, man, that shit is poison, I only take it if I can't breathe."

-Crissa

Well, wiki's medicine section is very erratic.

Take for example. Maxalt MLT, they'll give you that it's chemical name is Rizatriptan and in the UK it's available as Rizaliv and in Israel it's called Rizalt.

But take Valium, which is the easiest thing I can remember off hte top of my head.

It'll show you a list of fifteen different names in fifteen different countries. Obviously this is because Valium is a drug that's used more.

I was wondering something along the lines of a pillmd or somethign along those lines.

For the chemical side of the drug, I'm not too bothered, as my sis usually looks into it and I trust her to compare the medical information and the chemical make-up paperwork between my scanned handout and the information given by the drug pharmos in India.

One reason I don't buy from online companies.

Crissa: pseudoephidrine is a very good decongestant, and more and more people are finding that the replacement of choice, phenylephrine, is largely ineffective, so if used for the intended purpose there's little wrong with it. That being said, oxymetazoline generally works and is also not meth, so is doubly-good.

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I sort of jump through hoops to get my meds: I end up speaking to a different doctor each time, so that I'm only waiting 1 hour and not 2, and so every time I need to explain my symptoms and what I was last prescribed and everything.

When it's for my antidepressants, it's usually a matter of "I take Efexor 150mg, I've been on it for over a year now and it's working well. Could I please have another 6 months of scripts?" and they just print it out.

When it's for pain meds, I have to list everything I've unsuccessfully tried, as well as the things that have worked, and usually I also ask to see if they've found any effective non-narcotic pain killer since the last time, but seeing as the only effective pain killers seem to be opioids, I'm out of luck there and have to hope that they're not too paranoid to prescribe something that will actually work.

One day, the pain will probably reach the level where I'll try to yank one of my teeth (it needs extracting anyway), probably resulting in it splitting, and they'll be able to say "Yeah, I can see what the problem is. Here, this is a script for some oxy, but get it removed before it runs out."

And for the record, the reason it's so hard is because your presidents are always a bunch of cockbags, and our prime ministers love sucking American dick.

more people are finding that the replacement of choice, phenylephrine, is largely ineffective

Yeah I'm one of them.

But also, that doesn't mean the stuff isn't poison.

Mind you from my understanding the increasing difficulty to access the stuff isn't due to a fear for public health but because some minority of users were making it into harder drugs, or just taking it with alcohol for a real natural liver failure high.

So from what I understand the fact that I have to stumble into a chemist and mumble some semicoherent explanation, answer questions and show my damn drivers license to get the only medication that does anything for my shocking migrane symptoms about one week in every year is because of what amounts to prohibition.

PhoneLobster wrote:So from what I understand the fact that I have to stumble into a chemist and mumble some semicoherent explanation, answer questions and show my damn drivers license to get the only medication that does anything for my shocking migrane symptoms about one week in every year is because of what amounts to prohibition.

Prohibition is probably a bad metaphor, because alcohol is only rarely needed as a medication, but possibly the majority of Americans used it. Prescription drugs are more of a racket, where the doctors take a massive bribe to let you buy something you already know you need.

It's not like restricting it to pharmacies has reduced abuse of it.

And it is prohibition. If people were allowed to use LSD or MDMA or Moda or any of dozens of other drugs which have desired effects and little side effects, the use of drugs with undesired effects - because they are available - would go down. People in the US don't take meth drugs because they have other offers.

Alcohol and tobacco are far more addictive than even methylamphetamines. They kill far more people.

And merely banning pain meds won't stop people from abusing them. The people who abuse them for that effect will always abuse them, whether they're banned, not, addictive or not.

-Crissa

Far be it for me to say that drugs are ok.

But in effect, i'm going to be saying that anyway in the next few sentences. I am an ex-druggie. I never went through rehab, I didn't have a junkies habit. I was never that bad. But, I've seen it up close and personal. It can be bad. But, the level of prohibitive measures the government takes to stop this from happening is entirely too ludicrous.

States ban beaker flasks because they could be used in meth labs. The glass in a beaker flask is a little more fortified than a mason jar but not that much worse. But it's retarded.

I have chemistry majors who laugh and cry at the state of our science education because of the prohibition placed since the Reagan drug czars.

It's not like mason jars aren't sufficient to the job. They're just less safe. So it doesn't stop people from doing illegal things, just makes it more likely they'll harm others while doing so.

Wouldn't want people to be safe, you know?

-Crissa

Well, you ARE talking about the people who say "Water is drug paraphernalia at night clubs because of ecstasy." and "We wouldn't want people getting high/getting the pain relief they actually require. Far safer that they instead suffer irreversible liver failure from paracetamol and die in agony over the course of a week."

Of course "it's safe for people" is the last thing on their minds.