especially anti-psychs and SNRIs, these meds increase your body temp and the more you take, the more it does that. You are NOT just “feeling the heat” if you start to feel like you have sunstroke this Summer. You will most likely get it before anyone else so treat yourself as you would treat a small child. Ensure that you stay hydrated and keep an eye on yourself!
I had to remind myself of this because I’ve been feeling the heat a LOT since my dosage was increased and it can actually lead to your meds fucking up/you getting really sick!
And be careful because often the full effects of the sun on you don’t show up until later! I once had my body swell up hours after being out and it was horrible. If you’re on antipsychotics especially please stay hydrated, wear sunscreen, and try to stay in the shade!
I was definitely a profit killer when I worked in a pharmacy (which honestly was my favorite job in the entire world, but it was short-lived and nowadays you can’t work at a pharmacy like that, it’s all tied in with corporate retail and no one should ever trust me with a cash register ever). It was not, however, actually a profit killer for the pharmacy, just for the drug companies, so no one cared. These days I do medical billing, which means I actually bill OUT from hospitals so I’m mostly spending my professional time taking money away from insurance companies.
I will now impart all of my profit killing resources onto you, in case you don’t know them. I think most of you know them, now. But just in case you don’t.
THIS IS US-CENTRIC. I’M SORRY.
1. GoodRx – this thing has an app now, so you can look up the best places to get your expensive medicines at the lowest possible prices without insurance on the go, and you no longer have to print coupons because you can just hand over your phone or tablet. Times have changed for the better with GoodRx. Definitely use it before trying to fill your scrip, because it will tell you the best place to go. (You can do that on the website, too.)
2. NeedyMeds– Needymeds is basically the clearinghouse of drug payment assistance. They have their own discount cards, but also connections to many patient assistance programs run by drug companies themselves. They are good assistance programs, too.
3. Ask your county – This is not a link. This is a pro tip. Most county social services will have pharmacy discount programs for people with no and/or shitty pharmaceutical coverage. You can often just find them hanging around at social services offices; you can just pick one up and walk off with it.
4. Ordering online – There are a few safe online pharmacies. I keep a little database in a text file on my computer. Most of them are courtesy of CFS forums, my mother or voidbat, so a lot of that is a hat tip to other people, but if you’re in need of a place to get a drug without a prescription … first I’ll make sure you 100% know what you’re doing for safety reasons and then I’m happy to turn over a link.
5. Healthfinder– A government resource that helps find patient assistance programs in your area. This might also point out the convenient county card thing. RxHope is something a lot of people get pointed to via Healthfinder that’s a good program.
6. Mental Health America – Keeps a list of their best PAPs for psychiatric medications, which can be some of the most expensive and a lot of pharmacy plans don’t cover them at all.
This is so important ppl.
Signal boost the shit out of it!
Booooooooooooooooooost
Good Rx Saved my family a hundred dollars a month while I was getting signed up for CHIP seriously it’s a life savor especially for ridiculously expensive drugs like abilify
Useful info, friends! 😉
Since many of our followers are on medications, I feel like this would be an important resource. -Luna
Also! Some drug companies have patient assistance programs where they send you the drug for FREE if you are uninsured, or if your insurance doesn’t cover that drug.
Do a Google search for “patient assistant programs” + (your med), or search the manufacturers website. Sometimes the info is online; other times you have to call.
Even some of the big name pharma companies have this. It’s certainly not all companies, or all meds, but it is worth a shot.
Before Obamacare, I lost insurance and couldn’t pay for my mood stabilizers (kiiiiinda important to have those when you’re bipolar.) I was on generic Lamictal, but I went to the official Lamictal website, filled out a form with a valid prescription, and they mailed my meds to me every month for free.
If you know anything about bipolar disease, you know that that was a literal life saver. Patient assistance programs ftw!
This is so important given the recent vote to repeal Obamacare. And the cartoon above is so on point They’re literally voting to kill people. Literally.
Some of my meds are no longer going to be partially covered by my ridiculously expensive private insurance. I just used the GoodRX website to look it up, and I can either spend $40 at Target to pay for one of them out of pocket–per month–, or I can get it at Sams Club for $4. No that is not a typo. The drug I need to take every single day to keep my allergies from spiraling out of control (yay auto-immune bullshit) is literally ten times cheaper at Sams Club. Holy shit.
The generic Adrenaclick will cost $109.99 for two doses, compared with $649.99 for the same amount of drug in an EpiPen. That’s good news, both for financial and safety reasons: STAT reported last year that some parents and institutions had begun filling up syringes with epinephrine as a cost-cutting measure, a DIY solution that could pose great risk to the children who may have eventually needed injections. A more affordable alternative will help ensure safer epinephrine injections.
That’s assuming, though, that the people who need these devices know exactly what to ask for when they’re sitting in their doctors’ offices. Otherwise, they’ll still be stuck with the overpriced product. Here’s why: The mechanism by which Adrenaclick injects the drug is slightly different from EpiPen’s mechanism, so the Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the two are not therapeutically equivalent. That distinction is important because it means a prescription for an EpiPen cannot be filled with Adrenaclick. If you want the cheaper option, you have to have an Adrenaclick prescription.
You must ask your doctor for an Adrenaclick prescription!
I also found a coupon from Impax on 0.15mg and 0.3mg epinephrine injection, USP auto-injectors, which appear to be the generic version of Adrenaclick; these coupons cover up to $100 per pack for 3 packs of these injectors (6 total injectors).
So I was doing some research on common medications for a pharmacology class at school, and realized that Wikipedia is calling out the outrageous practices of pharmacological sales in the US. Right up there in the main intro to the medication they’re showing how much the drug costs to produce, versus how much a typical course of treatment costs in the USA.
Also, just so you’re aware, as of late Mat 2018, 1.80 GBP is 2.40 USD. For a three month supply of the pill. The same amount could cost you 150 USD in the United States.
One more direct BCP patient cost comparison I did a while back, for the same formulation between the UK and US.
Paying totally out of pocket for a private prescription with online consultation included? (Not under the NHS, which has no patient charges for family planning.)
That still worked out to £4.83/$6.23 per month. As compared to the roughly $20/month most US pharmacies were quoting through GoodRx.
After spending most of my life in the US, I have kept being impressed at the differences in cost paying out of pocket for medical/dental care in general. And, as I commented in that comparison post:
It’s not like we’re getting bargain basement pharmaceuticals here. It’s the same manufacturers. There’s just at least that big a difference in what they can get away with charging. Sometimes it’s a lot more than with this particular example.
I am going through an antidepressant discontinuation syndrome again. I couldn’t stand the exhaustion any more, and this thing doesn’t work for me anyway. I have something that does now (an anticonvulsant that wasn’t supposed to work because it wasn’t “evidence-based” for a diagnosis I received without any real evaluation, and the dose is so low it’s evidence-based for exactly nothing, but both are absolutely evidence-based based on what works for my family), so why continue pointlessly taking this?
At this point, I am tapering from an extremely low dose. Even that is awful. And I’m going faster than I theoretically should be because the dosages don’t actually exist to follow my prescriber’s theoretically preferred protocol. (This makes me think she has never actually tapered anybody off it, TBH.)
This is not a relapse. A nausea problem I never had cannot relapse.
And I can’t agree that talking about this is irresponsible unless I’m willing to agree that people with expected medication reactions matter so much more than those of us who don’t that we need to deny our reality for them. I’m not.
The thing that really gets me about this “don’t talk about the stuff it will dissuade people” etc.
I am on opioid painkillers. I have been on them around 5 years now with no problems whatsoever. But there are thousands of articles written further stigmatizing these drugs, chastizing people for depending on them, calling for more and more restrictions. Drugs that are the difference for myself and many others between being bedridden and being functional.
Like I would under no circumstances recommend them as a first step treatment. I agree there should be restrictions. Despite the fact I am like, the best case senario patient who is lowest tier abuse likelyhood, I would not actually want more pills then I am getting rx’d right now (around 20 a month that are cut in half as a maintenance dose usually) because these are ABSOLUTELY dangerous drugs. I am acutely aware even if none of their reasons for saying I am an abuse risk are true, I can spot potential red flags in myself they haven’t noticed nor care about and I am largely protected from them only through sheer spite of refusing to prove drs right.
But I am TERRIFIED of antidepressants. I have permanent damage to my health from side effects of them. Every time they put me on them they don’t do anything remotely positive and make me sicker somehow.
Antidepressants unlike painkillers ARE thrown around like candy. They are frequently prescribed by primary care doctors who have not been properly educated on them. They are considered the first line treatment not only for depression, but things like pain despite being an off label use often without any actual studies backing effectiveness. And as psychiatric medications they are often forced on people without their consent and then any side effects are brushed off as delusions an that is SCARY.
Just because there is stigma against depression treatment doesn’t mean those drugs somehow should be excused from critisism of the very real risks and negetive effects. For fucks sake like half of them have SUICIDAL IMPULSE as a potential side effect, as in “literally can do the opposite and make you worse instead”. People act like printed on the bottle side effects are some kind of slander under a capitalist medical system that wants you to buy them. I am sure the warnings on tobacco are fake too. Informed consent isn’t anti-recovery.
The risk of thromboembolism varies with different preparations; with second-generation pills (with an estrogen content less than 50μg), the risk of thromboembolism is small, with an incidence of approximately 15 per 100,000 users per year, compared with 5 per 100,000 per year among non-pregnant individuals not taking the pill, and 60 per 100,000 pregnancies.[89] In individuals using preparations containing third-generation progestogens (desogestrel or gestodene), the incidence of thromboembolism is approximately 25 per 100,000 users per year.[89] Also, the risk is greatest in subgroups with additional factors, such as smoking (which increases risk substantially) and long-continued use of the pill, especially in women over 35 years of age.[89]
So you hear this stuff and promptly forget about it, because everybody takes the pill and this hardly ever happens?
Well, six months ago it happened to me.
TLDR: This can actually happen and it’s serious, so get medical attention. For actual details see after the jump.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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