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Comment by master_crab | Hacker News Reader

Back to Pseudoephedrine! It's behind the counter at your local pharmacist.

I was denied this the last time I tried to buy it and the pharmacist couldn't even tell me why aside from "the system won't let me". I went to a different chain a half mile away and walked out with a month's supply of the stuff. Hilariously incompetently-designed regulation.

Meanwhile meth making is more efficient, cheaper, and delivers purer-grade glass than ever.

Most worthless law. Now i have to wait in line for 10 minutes to get it and yet meth is still widely available and usage actually increased. Did nothing except shift manufacturing to outside of the US.

And I can't stockpile it for allergy season (which is about 9 months out of the year for me). I have to make regularly scheduled trips to the pharmacy every two weeks which is a huge pain in the ass

You take 48 pills in two weeks?!

That’s pretty easy when the dose is two pills every six hours.

They make twelve hour extended release versions now. There are twelve per box and you can get three boxes at a time. That's 18 days but only if you take them twice a day, which you probably shouldn't if you like sleeping. If you take one a day, that's a whole month's worth.

You're going to have serious issues if you take that much. It's causes major problems after a few days.

I can get 15 of the 24 hour generic Claritins every 2 weeks. Works out to about 1 a day

My life on an ADHD med, a mental health med, and 3 other meds for transgender stuff.

I am very lucky to have a backlog of estradiol, my main HRT drug, because I was purposely "playing under speed" for most of a year, otherwise all 5 drugs would be randomly running out at 5 different times throughout the month. Almost nothing gets assigned to 90-day fills for some stupid fucking reason.

So from personal experience you can often just ask docs for a longer prescription if something isn't particularly restricted (like stimulant-type ADHD medications).

From friends, I know that some therapists and endocrinologists are willing to give 6 mo or even 1 yr scripts of hormones, though some will only do so under certain conditions. You might want to find a different doc. I know one person who gets a 3 mo supply of estradiol from a telehealth provider.

I once actually got denied and had to buy a smaller box (for the same price). What the hell happens to families with multiple teens who all get sick at the same time?

Any reason you choose to take PE rather than a corticosteroid nasal spray?

Corticosteroids are powerful substances, and have lots of potential adverse effects - and long-term usage can wreak havoc. The physiological side-effects of corticosteroid withdrawal can be quite awful. They are amazing, necessary, drugs for society. But, when something as safe and effective as pseudoephedrine can do the trick (it really is quite safe, and even has less potential interactions with things than plenty of OTC drugs do), there is literally no reason for anything else.

When I get a cold, (pseudo)ephedrine is the only medication that actually really helps. I don't need it often, I just try to remember to buy some once in a blue moon when I'm already at the pharmacy so that when I need some, it will be there. But for people with allergies or those who get sick a lot, the current process is yet another completely pointless annoyance.

Corticosteroid nasal spray does not have the same effects as when it is administered in other ways and is safe even for long-time use as three different doctors in my country told me.

Yep - I think parent poster is conflating the effects of oral corticosteroid use (which believe me, I know, and they SUCK) with topical usage.

Yes, I was. Thank you both for pointing this out.

I just spent dug in to this and, wow, I was wrong! Most all the negatives that occur with parenteral and oral routes appear to be absent in the intranasal form. And there is quite a lot of research to back that up.

Thank you for correcting me. And likely sending me down another rabbit hole.

Pseudoephedrine should be unrestricted, there’s no way to compete on price with meth cooked in an industrial lab in Mexico by using pseudoephedrine as a precursor. Keep it behind the counter (to prevent theft) but let adults buy as much as they want.

There was actually a push to make it rx only. Oregon and Mississippi passed laws to make it RX, luckily those laws have been rolled back.

Bring back domestic manufacturing jobs!

Small batch, organic, artisanal, fair trade meth for the win!

Unfortunately there is an absurdly low limit on purchasing amount in the US.

In addition, I can't seem to find the 24 hour versions anywhere right now. I could probably buy meth more conveniently. :(

Cue: "A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine" https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...

I've only had to buy it in three states, but generally my experience has been that you can buy a "30 day supply" per month. How often are you sick that you need more than 30 days of the stuff every month? If we run out I'll buy a 30 day supply and that generally lasts the whole family a year or more.

You definitely don't have anyone in your family who gets severe congestion from allergies then. The "funnest" form it takes for me is when I start going partially blind in one eye due the the sinus pressure

When it’s that bad why wouldn’t you just get a prescription for an appropriate amount for your situation?

> When it’s that bad why wouldn’t you just get a prescription for an appropriate amount for your situation?

Prescriptions take time and money.

I could do it with less effort and cost than OTC. Online message my PCP, prescription sent to pharmacy, mailed to me at my house, cost $0 since it's just a generic. And I have a cheap as shit high deductible plan with a steep out of pocket maximum, not some cadillac plan.

OTC would be faster, but if I have a chronic need for large amounts of pseudoephedrine I'm not waiting until it hurts before I run to the store. I'm getting my doc to make sure I have a hell of a good stash (and I checked, just to be sure -- the limits don't exist if it's prescription; at least not in Oregon, which is famously restrictive on pseudoephedrine).

Would it be better to relax the restrictions that now seem pointless on the OTC version? Yep. But if someone is bitching on HN about how they can barely get what they desperately need, I'd say it's time to stop being idealistic and go get the damn drugs already.

"I don't have this problem, therefor this problem doesn't exist, and so you don't have this problem."

> Unfortunately there is an absurdly low limit on purchasing amount in the US.

The maximum safe dose for an adult is 240 mg in a 24 hour period. Current guidelines allow for getting a 10 day supply (the average cold lasts 7-10 days) in a single visit, and basically a limitless supply with a few visits (37 days worth every 30 days).

If you are running into purchasing limits, you are either making meth or blowing out your liver.

Edit: Math is hard. The 30 day limit is 7.5 grams (a 31 day supply), or 3.6 grams per trip (a 15 day supply).

> If you are running into purchasing limits, you are either making meth

This would also be an insanely expensive way to make meth.

I seem to only be able to buy 10 days of Sudafed 24 Hour every 14 days. That doesn't work if you have allergies.

Presumably because places like Walgreen's can't adjust compliance per state and places like Alaska have "No person may purchase or possess more than 6 g of PSE, EPH or PPA per 30 days unless dispensed pursuant to a prescription"

Note that 6g / .240g = 25. So I can only buy 25 days worth of pills every 30 days. Or 12.5 pills every 15 days which is suspiciously close to that 10 every 14 days number.

This is where you need to bring a buddy on every trip...

> Note that 6g / .240g = 25

Fortunately we are both wrong. I have updated my previous post up thread.

How am I wrong? I quoted the Alaska requirements. Are those not correct? Please reference.

I guess you found the one state who isn't in line with federal law. :)

https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/meth/cma2005.html https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/pseudoephed...

Aren’t there better things to take longer term for allergies? Pseudoephedrine is amazing for colds etc. but I’ve always seen warnings not to take it for more than a few days at a time…

What's 10 days/4 people? like... a family that lives together? Who will almost inevitably get each other sick? If the average cold lasts 7-10 days, one of them's going shopping for more while sick.

Sounds like great public health and safety policy there.

At least some states track it on a household (address) basis.

Or just straight ephedrine, which is also behind the counter at your local pharmacist (brand name Bronkaid).

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