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Comment by awakeasleep | Hacker News Reader

And the hostile suspicion of pharmacy techs when you ask for it!

I swear they all believe in phenylephrine and think the only reason someone would buy psueudafed is to do meth.

Hmm, I never get this reaction, I suspect it has to do with the thousand-yard stare that fairly clearly conveys, "I'm way too sick to care about your judgment cuz I ran out of Sudafed and now I'm dealing with you."

I can't imagine one giving me any actual lip, but my escalation strategy there is to look them dead in the eye and ask them whether they're going to give me my perfectly-legal cold remedy or not.

https://xkcd.com/1618/

> "Seriously considering buying some illegal drugs to try to turn them back into cold medicine."

Now that sounds like a project.

A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine[1]

[1] http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf

I’m convinced that the location of your pharmacy plus whatever class signals you’re silently emanating strongly influence how pharmacists respond to requests for pseudoephedrine. I’ve also never had any issues getting it, but I’m an upper-income guy in a wealthy area of Seattle. I have family members in the rural Midwest who, to put it gently, do not signal upper-class status, and they have told me that pharmacists give them lots of hassle regarding cold medicine. You can sort of understand the logic but it’s a pretty ugly display of naked classism.

I have six kids, so it can look suspicious when we all get a cold, but I go to a pharmacy I use regularly and never get hassled.

If that's the case for OTC cold medicine, it makes you wonder how it is for prescription products like ADHD medication or, God forbid, opiate-based painkillers. My sympathy is stirred up for anyone in chronic pain who happens to exude lower-class status signals!

If that's the case for OTC cold medicine...

If you follow along with the thread, you'll realize this isn't about OTC cold medicine.

What? It's about psuedoephedrine which is available without a prescription; but is subject to mandatory tracking. Not too many years ago, it was available off the shelf.

Two states ban pseudoephedrine without a prescription, and you can’t buy it across state lines.

This isn't even an anecdote about someone being refused sudafed; it's a conjecture that there might be such an anecdote.

Not so much that, just a bit of curious wonder / hope / sadness about the fact that I personally have interpersonal resources that took careful observation to learn that other people do not.

By other people I am including my mother, who is the nicest lady you could imagine, but regularly gets shamed and embarrassed by the medical establishment. This stuff affects her.

It doesn't affect me. I will either escalate all the way to a physical fistfight if I have to or just suddenly decide all of a sudden it's not worth my time and just walk away and forget about it. Usually a bit of both because I typically find that the dynamics I thought I was dealing with going in weren't really there and I'm just acting silly.

Either way I get answers, darnit, and I don't stop until I get them. Same hacker mentality applied to the interpersonal realm. I don't really know how to articulate this mindset, that you really don't have to put up with this behavior, that you can have power over the situation, not even to my own mother.

Where I'm coming from is just that the statistical base rate of pseudo->meth cooks is so low, I presume even if you account for "smurfing" (because nasal congestion is such a universal ailment) that dragnetting sudafed sales can't be productive, and pharmacists will quickly lose interest in scrutinizing customers buying in normal amounts. I'm prepared to be wrong, my suspicion is that most of the concern about disapproving looks from pharmacists is imagined.

I bought some sudafed a week ago and got offered more of it by the pharmacist (they sold me a package with twice as many pills as the one I brought up a card for). And I am a pretty scruffy looking dude; on my better days my fashion sensibility and grooming approaches "possibly homeless".

I usually approach with something indicating disdain for the restrictions like "I'd like as much store-brand pseudoephedrine as the ninnies will let you sell me". I've never had any pushback.

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