#drugs are drugs are drugs just because the shit I’m on is prescription and ‘useful’ doesn’t mean it’s any less of an addiction

[whatareyoudoingwithamaserati]

The fact that I have to renew the perscription for the medication I will be on for the rest of my life every six months is so fucking dumb to me. Yeah, sorry! You’re taking this shit every single day and if you don’t get the prescription filled on time you’re going to go into hellish withdrawal. But we have to reconvene every six months to make sure you REALLY need to keep this prescription active. Are you sure you still need to take the med we have said you will be on for the rest of your life? Are you sure you need it?

[initiala]

Late night “taking a cocktail of medications to figure out how to manage my new diagnoses and it’s making my filters go away” hours posting

So here’s why you shouldn’t take Ozempic for weight loss, from someone who has to take Metformin (another medicine people use for weight loss)

NUMBER ONE. Ozempic and Metformin are actually drugs for managing diabetes and preventing diabetes. You taking it for weight loss instead of doing the hard thing is making it scarce for people who actually need it for medical reasons. Same thing with people who take Adderall to “focus” for college. You’re making it hard for people with ADHD to access their medicine.

NUMBER TWO. It makes you shit liquid for weeks. I’m not even joking. Your shit will be diarrhea for weeks and that’s how the weight comes off. Your tummy will be upset the whole time. You will be miserable. I know this for a fact because I had to change which type of Metformin I took; the kind you take twice a day made me shit my pants multiple times because I trusted too many farts. SHITTING YOUR PANTS AS AN ADULT JUST TO BE SKINNIER IS NOT WORTH IT. DO NOT PAY THE PRICE. YOU WILL BE ON THE TOILET ALL THE TIME AND YOUR TUMMY WILL HURT ALWAYS AND YOU WILL NOT BE BRAVE ABOUT IT.

NUMBER THREE. If constantly shitting liquid wasn’t enough, Metformin is a fucking huge pill. Like it’s ridiculous. And Ozempic, from what I can tell, involves stabbing yourself in the stomach regularly for injections. Those are your options. Swallowing a big pill or stabbing yourself and hoping you know how to inject correctly.

NUMBER FOUR. Stop ordering medicine online without getting prescriptions from doctors, or “getting prescriptions from doctors” which are actually doctors who lost a license to practice but do this anyway because it’s easy money to get people addicted to drugs they don’t need.

[sakuradeservedbetter91]

a girl walks into a bookshop

Pairing: Kakashi/Sakura

Rating: M

Summary: Sakura and Kakashi meeting in a bookshop. Sparks fly.

Tags: bookshop AU, lots and lots of flirting and sexual innuendo, prescription drug use for pain management, modern au

Snippet:

“Hmm, oh where could you be, trashy romance novel?” Sakura murmured to herself, staring dazedly at the rows of books before her, her reusable grocery bag heavy on her shoulder.

Her eyes finally focused on the brightly covered orange books in front of her, and she gasped, reaching out to grab the only copy of Icha Icha Paradise on the shelf. Before her fingers could touch the spine, long, large, masculine fingers snatched the book from beneath her outstretched hand.

“Hey! That’s mine,” Sakura pouted, her eyes widening when she saw the most attractive man attached to those book-thieving fingers.

“Hmm,” his dark eyes roved up and down her figure, “is your name on it?”

“Yes,” she lied, her face hot from being in the mere presence of this beautiful man.

How was that face any fair at all? He should hide it behind a mask for goodness sake and give other people a chance. It didn’t even matter that his hair was silver, and probably much older than he looked, because he was just so handsome. Sakura felt sweat drip down her back, but that was probably just an effect of the muscle relaxer. Not because this man made her nervous, oh no.

“Oh?” he hummed, his lips quirking up into the most sinful smile Sakura had ever seen. “And what’s your name exactly?”

“Sakura,” she said with a huff, crossing her arms and glancing away from his face, only to gulp as her eyes strayed to the rest of this man’s figure in front of her. “Sakura Haruno.”

Holy shit, he was so tall? And oh goodness, his forearms, what the everloving–Sakura snapped her open mouth shut when she realized where her thoughts were taking her, her ears burning.

“Hmm, I don’t see your name anywhere in this book, Sakura,” the tall man said, and Sakura gulped as she noticed his smirk. “I’m Kakashi Hatake by the way, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t, thank you very much,” Sakura said, and she didn’t know where the boldness came from her, but she placed her hand on the book and tugged. “Now please hand over my book.”

Full story on AO3:

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Man those people on your ‘why are you straight edge’ poll are really showing their disdain for people who engage with any sort of drug… if I may add, I voted for having a medical restriction (my liver is failing thank youuuu immune system) AND I also take prescription opiate medication to help with pain. Every time I take my painkillers on days where I’m not working so that I can enjoy my hobbies I have complicated feelings about it because anti opiate rhetoric is just EVERYWHERE and it’s like… I just want to have a nice day. Getting over the ‘oh but it can be ADDICTIVE’ stigma is so important and it’s really not different just because I have a prescription. People who are so nasty about drug use for recreation are so stressful to me.

Ikr it's like people have such disdain for addicts, and drug users in general. I get upset about this because while I personally am a very casual user and I spend most of the time sober and am self assured so I can walk people being dicks about it off, but I know addicts and their lives are hard enough without all the stigma piled on top of it. I just wish everyone could be addiction neutral and pro harm reduction but they're so moralistic about it. I wasnt the politest I could have been about people not drinking and having sex because I was trying to keep it light and I know people take things like this really serious and it kinda backfired.

But like I totally know what you mean about the opioid thing. I really think that our society could benefit from being a little more addiction neutral, because yeah sometimes substance dependency does ruin your life, but I'm neurodivergent and I've met people where I think that doing life with drugs is better for them. Like you raise a great point about opioids. They're dangerous and addictive but if you're in pain because of a disability you need pain management. It's not really an option if you want to lead a normal life. There's a lot of heroin addicts who got that way because they needed pain management and their doctors refused them on the basis that they might become addicted, but taking a daily pill to improve your life, while it may be illegal depending on the substance, isn't bad. I bring up my own neurodivergence because I've heard of the same thing with ADHD and stimulants. Most people who have an ADHD diagnosis can get an Adderall prescription, but undiagnosed people and people falling through insurance cracks will sometimes turn to the street version. And it's like those people, both the ones with a script and the ones who are self medicating, should not be forced to live a substandard life because of someone else imagines there's some purity to a life without drugs. The goal should be to get those people the drugs they need in the safest way possible.

And I come down really easy, to the point where I forget to take prescription meds and don't experience any ill effects, but I have a friend who experiences a come down from their adhd meds thats not unlike the comedown ive seen from my other friend who's a meth user, and this friend with the ADHD meds can't function without them. But when the doctor and the pharmacist get them their meds on time they live a perfectly happy fulfilling life. That's what I mean when I say I'm addiction neutral. Most people who get addicted didn't just pick up heroin or whatever one day for shits and giggles. When I fuck around with "highly addictive" substances I make sure I'm in a good place and it's not a problem to drop them. People who develop problems are usually either they're escaping from something or self medicating. The goal for society can't be to never do drugs we've had drugs literally for longer than we've been humans.

I've heard second hand of a study which I haven't gone looking for, I might, because as you can tell this is a bit of a soap box for me, where they gave Heroin addicts a prescribed dose of heroin like you would pick up Percocet for chronic pain at a pharmacy, and because those addicts weren't shooting up mystery amounts and worrying where they were going to get their next hit from so they didn't start rattling and all the other things that make addicts lives hell, they were able to start doing things like holding down jobs. That study should have been a game changer. I want addicts to be able to live, and selfishly I want to be able to go to the drug store when I'm bored and say "one mdma high no fentanyl please" and leave with something to spice up the afternoon. That's like, not a moral failing on my part even though I'm not self medicating I'm just having fun.

The way the war on drugs has ruined drugs, which like, genuinely drugs are sort of magical when you think about it. Not just the fun ones either. Like when I was a baby I had a really bad bladder infection that absolutely would have killed me if I had had that same situation just like 100 years ago, but my mom was able to force a pill down my throat and it went away. Since then I've probably had at least a dozen little things like that that would have killed me dead if someone hadn't invented a chemical that could interact with my body and make it genuinely not a problem. and the fact that we have that for things like chronic pain and we're too afraid to use it because of stigma is so insane. Like god forbid people get high.

[wonderlandleighleigh]

(warning for drug use)

1962

“You need to get back to New York.”

Lenny snorts as he settles back in his desk chair. “What for?” he asks. “It’s not like you can have me on the show, Gordon.”

Gordon sighs heavily. “Look, I- I don’t know how to...Midge hasn’t been feeling like herself.”

He sits up quickly, gripping the phone. He hasn’t been watching the show lately. He just doesn’t want to be reminded of what he’d left behind. It was better to have a clean break after not being able to gig in New York again and Midge is better off without him anyways. “What does that mean, ‘not like herself’?”

“It means...she was feeling depressed,” Gordon says awkwardly. “And her friend Imogene suggested she go see someone about it...”

Lenny squeezes his eyes shut. “Let me guess: A doctor someone with a prescription pad.”  

“Good guess,” Gordon says. “She’s not eating much, as far as I know. Probably not sleeping, either. Everyone else thinks she’s fine, but I’m worried she’s been taking more than she should, and if anyone can sniff out a Midge problem, it’s you.”

“I shouldn’t,” Lenny tells him. “We ended things because I fucked it all up, she doesn’t want to see me.”

“I am begging you,” Gordon tells him. “Put your shit aside for a few days. I don’t wanna lose my house comic, and I really don’t wanna lose my friend.”

Lenny sighs heavily. “I’ll catch the next flight out. But you’re paying for my hotel room.”

“Fuck you, you know you’re gonna be staying with Midge.”

“I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

****

His first stop is Midge’s, and when he knocks on the door, there’s no answer. So it’s a good thing he still has the key to the utility entrance in the kitchen. 

When he steps in, the apartment is mostly dark (odd for Midge and her parents), and there’s an eeriness to the place being so quiet.

“Midge?” he calls. “You home?”

Her voice is quiet, coming from the bathroom.

“Lenny?”

He heads that way, and he finds

Well.

Midge is sitting up against the bathtub, looking dazed, wearing her nightgown, her hair curly around her pretty but too-thin face.

And there’s a pill bottle on the sink.

Lenny snatches it up, reading it quickly. “Dexamyl. Fuck, Midge, if you wanted a drug problem, I could have given you better pointers.”

She shakes her head, trying to focus on him. “The doctor said to take two when I need them, but I...I got a little confused and I think I already took them, and then I took two more...”

“So you’ve literally been knocked on your ass,” Lenny says. “Midge, you went through this with me. Why would you-”

“I was sad,” she blurts out, squeezing her eyes shut. “I went to this doctor Imogene recommended, and-”

“He gave you a barbiturate and amphetamine mix to make you feel happy,” Lenny finishes for her.

“He said they would help,” Midge tells him. “That...that lots of women take these to help them.” 

“Where are your parents?”

“Paris. Kids are with Joel this week.”

Lenny sighs softly and sits next to her, wrapping an arm around her, letting her cuddle in against him. “I’m sorry, Sweetheart, I’m here.”

“You’ll leave again,” she slurs out. “Everyone leaves. Joel. Shy’s plane. You.”

He sighs softly and holds her tighter.

*****

Eventually, he gets Midge settled in bed with some water, and she falls into a hard sleep. He sighs heavily and tidies up a little before dumping the pills into the toilet and flushing.

This wasn’t supposed to happen to Midge. Him, sure. He’s fallen off the wagon plenty in the last couple of years, though he’s two months clean now by some fucking miracle. But Midge isn’t supposed to be the one to fall for this crap.

“Dexamyl,” he says over the phone to Gordon a little while later as he puts together some soup in the kitchen. “She’s high as a fucking kite, and she doesn’t remember how the hell many she takes so she just takes more.”

“Whelp. She’s officially on paid leave from the show.”

“Yeah,” Lenny sighs.

“You wanna fill in for her?”

“Is that legal?”

“Who gives a fuck?”

*****

When he heads back to the bedroom, Midge is up and looking a little more with it, sitting with her chin on her knees, shame on her face.

“I made soup,” he offers. “You must be hungry.”

She shrugs.

“I know the pills make you lose your appetite,” he says gently. “But you have to eat something, Midge.”

He still doesn’t get an answer, and Lenny sighs as he walks over, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I talked to Gordon. He’s put you on paid leave for the next few weeks so you have some time to recover.”

“Fine,” she says quietly.

“He’s the one who asked me to fly in, by the way,” Lenny explains. “He was worried about you.”

Midge nods slowly. “I’m sorry, Lenny. This is probably the last thing you needed.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“I just started to feel so hopeless, and...and Imogene said that he had helped her. I thought it was safe.”

“It’s not your fault, Midge,” Lenny assures her. “Shit’s like candy, believe me, I know.”

“Did you get rid of them?”

“Yes, I did. Flushed.”

She nods. “Thanks.”

“I’m always here for you, Midge,” he says quietly. “You know how much I love you. Hell, I left because I love you.”

She doesn’t respond to that.

“Can I get you some soup?” he offers. “Please?”

Midge nods, swallowing. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” he breathes out, relieved. “I’ll be right back.”

She reaches out quickly, snatching at his hand. “Lenny.”

He stops, gazing down at her worried.

“I love you, too,” she says quietly, gazing up at him sadly. “You know I do.”

Lenny nods, stroking her hair gently. “I know, Sweetheart. I’ll be right back.”

She nods, loosening her grip on him, and letting him go.

[kuchipark]

South Park AU where all the characters have a signature drug:

(I personally thought this was absolutely hilarious)

Mr Mackey:

- Crack/smack

His street name is Mr. Crackey, and later on Mr. Smackey.

He feels down in the dumps and “accidentally” does some crack, after which he immediately gets addicted. He goes on the bender of a lifetime and ends up in severe dept to a scary drug dealer, notorious for cutting off the balls of those who don’t pay him back. He decides to sell crack to the elementary students, with the help of Craig Tucker (also known as Crack Tucker), to pay off his dept. Instead of paying the guy back, though, he decides to try some Heroin and thus becomes Mr. Smackey.

Stan Marsh:

- Weed

Street name is Stan The Stoner, (Stanner for short)

Starts selling weed to replace his father, who gave up on weed for his new acid addiction. When you buy his weed you are legally obligated to say you’re “stanned.”

Eric Cartman:

- Cocaine

Street name is Eric Cokeman.

You can buy either Cocaine, or Coca-Cola flavored anything (including Coke flavored coke). He starts selling it because he can. Nothing you buy from him is safe or clean. But his shit is also extremely addictive, so he somehow still has costumers. Sneaks it into ppl’s food on occasion, trying to get them hooked. He hides the cocaine up his ass, every goddamn time (even though it’s not really necessary) and the stench is foul. He claims that it’s just his signature.

Kyle Broflovski:

- Ketamine

Street name is Kytamine or Ketty-B (Kyley-B)

Doing it as a fuck you to his mom, and because Eric wouldn’t get off his ass about how he could “never be as good at selling drugs” as him. Every time you try to buy from him, he goes on a whole monologue of all the dangers and everything you should and shouldn’t do. He’ll tells you exactly how much mg you should use and strongly advocated for people to buy a scale to perfectly measure it. People usually walk away before he’s done talking, and he constantly rants about it to Stan.

Kenny McCormick:

- Methamphetamine/Cocaine

Street name is Kenny MethCokeMick or just Methcokemick. MC for short

Fought with Kyle over the Ketamine, because he personally thinks “Kennymine/Kennamine” would be a better name than Kytamine. But je settled for selling Meth with Marjorine. He’s also addicted to cocaine and “helps out” Cartman with selling; Hence, MethCokemick. His charm is the key to his sales. Richard Tweak is their #1 buyer.

Marjorine Stotch:

- Methamphetamine

Street name is Metharine

Sells meth with Kenny. Just happy to be there. Really convincing seller. Really sweet but if you fuck her over she’ll do worse than snip your balls.

Tolkien Black:

- Tylenol

Street name is Tylenol Black

Has a whole room dedicated to the “craft” of selling prescription drugs. Steals the drugs from his mom who’s a chemist for a pharmaceutical company. His dad knows this but he secretly loves how pissed off Randy gets when he claims that Tolkien steals his business, even though they don’t even sell the same shit.

Tweek Tweak:

- Meth, obviously

Referred to as The Tweak, or just “tweak” for short.

Doesn’t know he’s addicted to meth. He doesn’t know people refer to him as as The Tweak. His parents put meth in his coffee.

Craig Tucker:

- Crack

Street name is Crack Tucker

Helps sell crack to elementary students with Mr. Mackey. Intimidates people into buying his shit or guilts them into buying it: “Oh you don’t want my Crack? Why? Is it because I’m gay? What? You think a a gay guy can’t sell good crack?! I see how it is..” and it’s super effective, they end up giving more money than they need to, to show their support for his queerness, which really saved his ass when his former partner, Mr. Crackey, ditches him in exchange for Heroin and blames the money he hasn’t payed back yet on Craig. Started the nickname: “The Tweak.”

Randy Marsh:

-Acid

Street name is Rancid

He chose this name. No, he does not see what’s wrong with it. He’s trying to get his kids hooked on the stuff so that they can “Finally do some fucking family bonding time.” He calls them pathetic, whiny pussies every single time they refuse. And sulks about his lame kids. Actively shit talks Tolkien to costumers. To the point where he’ll see Tolkien sell someone something and he’ll follow them home and stalk them so that he can “coincidentally” run into them and just so happen to bring up how Tolkien peed his pants once back in third grade. He knows this because he constantly bugs Stan about embarrassing moments in Tolkien’s life and if Stan doesn’t wanna tell him any, he’ll ground him for being a “blood betraying judas.”

Heidi Turner:

- Hash

Steet name is Highdi

Hippie. Sells Hash. Wanted to sell weed but could not compete with Stan, so she switched. Advertises all of it as environmentally friendly, cruelty free and vegan. Gets her girls to hand out business cards to everyone around town. The business cards are cute and pink with “WE DONT TEST ON ANIMALS” written in big, bold letters. Her shit is FDA approved.

Rebecca McArthur, AKA Red:

- Red ice (if you ever played Detroit Become Human, yk what that is)

Street name is Red Ice

Red ice isn’t a real drug, but in this universe it is and it was invented by miss Red herself. According to google, red Ice is “a synthetic stimulant composed of trace amounts of thirium, acetone, lithium, toluene, and hydrochloric acid. The molecular formula for Red Ice given in graphics is C17H21NO4 (the chemical formula for cocaine).” Though the contents doesn’t actually really match cocaine, it looks more like meth that is red.

Jimmy Valmer:

- Viagra

Street name is Jimmy Viagra, but people just say Jimmy V

His cerebral palsy isn’t going to stop him from getting it up. His mission is to give his paralyzed buddies the opportunity to get their dick wet. And he advocates for “Boners For The Handicapped” and is very passionate about his cause.

Timmy Burch:

- Viagra and LSD

Street name is Trippy Timmy

Jimmy V’s number one customer. Got his nickname by selling LSD with extremely powerful hallucinations.

Mr. Slave & Gay Al

- Magic Mushrooms & Laughing Gas

Street names are Mr. Shrooms and Gay G(ass)

Thank you for your time!

[itsnotmyfaultsomepeoplecantread]

“You have a dependence on your prescription medication.”

Not to say anything for people who have had super harmful experiences with drug addiction. This isn’t about that.

However. If your response to someone who can’t function without their life-saving medication is to call them an addict… Idk I think maybe you should reevaluate your life or something.

Like, yes, I have physical withdrawal symptoms when I don’t take my antidepressants. Part of that is because without it, I lose my shit. Like, just naturally. I go insane. Off the rails. I Do Not Like Myself As A Person Or Anyone Else For That Matter. So of course when I regularly take the medication that helps me feel like a Human Person and not like, Idk, a drowning cryptid that’s somehow also on fire, yeah, you know, I might feel the effects of that. Does that mean I need to get off of it? No. Why? Because if my options are to be “addicted” to the medication that keeps me stable, or literally wanting to die, then I’m gonna choose the med.

Of course, this is a fairly mild example because I’m on a lot of fucking medications for my disabilities. Also, some meds stop working after a while because of tolerance levels, which STILL does not mean that the person taking it “needs to get off of meds” for fear of becoming an addict. Those are not the same.

My point here, is that a lot of doctors are now reluctant to prescribe a lot of the medications some of us literally need to function, and it’s because of this culture that can’t seem to distinguish between true addiction** (I.e. non-necessity enjoyment) and medical necessity.

[**There’s a lot more to this part too with healthcare systems and prosecution and shit but tbh I’m running out of steam with this rant sorry].

So anyway yeah. If your response to any person on a prescription medication is to ask them “isn’t the goal to be able to function without it?” OR to straight up call them an addict…

Then you’re an ableist piece of sh*t and I hate you.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[moldybits]

I need to bitch for a minute here so hold on a sec

I understand most people don’t understand how pharmacies work. I don’t think corporations adding in things like drive thrus has helped retail pharmacy’s image either. But holy shit, this video (and especially the comments) fucking infuriate me

First off, I want everyone to know, a pharmacist has the 100% legal right to not fill your prescription for any reason. Now, normally when there is an issue with the prescription, the pharmacist will attempt to contract the prescriber to have something fixed, changed, clarified, etc. Rarely will a pharmacist ever outright refuse a prescription. I’ve seen it happen only a few times- and those few times came with good reasons. Remember, this is their license on the line. If they were to allow a prescription to get filled that could hurt or even kill you, and something did happen to you, then legal authorities come back at the pharmacist first for allowing it to be dispensed. I hate seeing comments like “this is between me and my doctor!!”. Your pharmacist knows more about medications and drug interactions than your prescriber. Your pharmacist is a healthcare professional. For the love of god they’re not fucking fast food workers that stand around and approve every medication they see.

Second, also in response to the comments, if you’re gonna complain about HIPAA, you better at least spell it right. It isn’t “HIPPA” 🙄. Anyway, yes a pharmacist can ask you any medical question they’d like. I can ask you any question I’d like as a pharmacy tech! I just can’t take your medical information and just tell the next random person in line. That is what HIPAA is. We’ve had a woman complain in the pharmacy that asking for her birthday- which is how we look up your medication in the first place- is a violation of HIPAA. It’s fucking not.

In response to the video- no one refused to fill the prescription. What most likely happened is this: Mounjaro is currently only FDA approved for type 2 diabetes. Not weight loss. Insurance rarely covers Mounjaro anyway. Won’t cover it at all for weight loss. There is a manufacturer discount card that can bring it down to $25 (this has changed). In order to bill the discount card, it basically needs to be billed thru insurance first, then be rejected, then billed thru the discount card which would usually bring it to the $25. They changed this for the new cards. Because of auditing, it now only covers the prescription if there is a type 2 diagnosis on the prescription. It will not cover it without it. So what probably happened is that the pharmacist tried to contact the prescriber for a diagnosis when the discount card didn’t go through, the provider didn’t get back to them, so they’re asking the patient (which they can legally do!) if they are using it for weight loss or diabetes. If course, a chain retail pharmacy can fill it for cash, if you’re willing to pay over $1000 out of pocket for it. Which I doubt the patient being mentioned in this video wanted to do. I specify chain pharmacy btw, because an independent might out right refuse to fill it solely based on profit alone. What if they order in Mounjaro, which has a huge cost, and you say you’ll pick it up for cash, but you never do? Now that pharmacy is out major $$$. Not as big of a deal for chain pharmacies, but it can hurt an independent. At the end of the day though, it wasn’t a refusal to fill, it just wasn’t covered and the patient didn’t want it. I’m sure had this woman just called and asked the pharmacist would’ve told her that. 

I do have 1 final point though. I’d like to point out this woman is a NP- Nurse Practitioner- and NOT a doctor. I know a lot of people don’t know the difference between PA/NPs and actual doctors, but I can’t emphasize enough that while she can diagnose and treat, she did NOT go to an actual medical school a doctor went to. Looking at her profile, she works at a place called “Lotus Healthcare and Aesthetics”, which while they say they offer physicals and vaccinations… it seems to me they focus heavily on “beauty and aesthetics” such as spray tanning and lash extensions…. Ya know, real medically important shit. If you wanna learn more about this shit just look over at r/Noctor and you’ll see what I mean

I’m not shocked this woman doesn’t know shit about pharmacies. But she spreads a message that I have to deal with every day at work. Pharmacies, as a whole, are not your enemy. Drug manufacturers and insurance companies will cause most of your headaches. Corporations that overwork and underpay both the pharmacists and techs are also the problem too. (Look, I’m not saying there aren’t shit pharmacists and you can’t have a bad experience. I’ve met awful pharmacists and techs. But most people I’ve met truly care about their work and their patients).

[blackbellybella]

If you’re giving your pet Bravecto or any of it’s off brand counter parts please reconsider.

Hmhnn I like and hate how the right tiktok finds me at the wrong times. My baby tater passed away this year from developing mega esophagus. It was a bit of a sudden decline despite having a pior skin condition.

So we took him to the 1st vet because these random sores would show up without explanation. Best way to describe it he essentially looked like a zombie dog. Our vet prescribed him Bravecto even tho I told her at the time of the skin condition we had not had fleas for almost a year. I’m very particular about the medications and products I give my fur kids because now a days it just seems like people are just playing with chemicals and throwing shit on shelves and calling it a day. Especially with more cost effective pet products. But I reluctantly gave in to my vet because I didn’t want my paranoia to get in the way of my babies health. It didn’t do anything he still had sores because we had no fleas to get rid of also our other dog had no sign of fleas or itching. I went to a 2nd vet they determined it was his food and provided me medicated shampoo he was fine with in 2 to 3 weeks. Shortly after that he started throwing up uncontrollably. This was probably a month or so after his Bravecto prescription. It was single 3 month chewable.

The tiktok was a vet technician talking about how Bravecto has been causing neurological issues in dogs. So I looked into it, mega esophagus is a muscular/neurological issue, he didn’t start developing ME till after the Bravecto. He declined so quickly. The 3rd vet we took him to actually confirmed he had ME and even she was surprised at how quickly he declined in those 3 to 4 months. He passed before we were able to get his blood work fully done.

I did more research the FDA put out a warning for Bravecto and others using the same main chemical in 2018! I asked my 1st vet if there were any adverse effects I should know about and she said there wasn’t anything. There was a whole fucking class action lawsuit against this fucking company. I’m reading forums where pet owners have taken their dogs in for toxicology testing and blood work and Bravecto and other drugs using similar chemicals were the cause of their pets passing and or neurological issues. Some have been able to link Bravecto with Mega esophagus.

Now I’m kinda stuck here with the what if I stuck to my guns when I initially told my 1st vet no to the flea medication would tater still be here. I was desperately trying anything to help him and that was possibly the cause.

[beholdthemem]

Something so frustrating about the meds shortage is that even when I can get my meds, I feel guilty about taking them. Like, I have to go through a whole ass song and dance to myself about whether or not I can justify taking one on a given day- ‘Do we have enough we need to do to make using one worth it? We can’t take these every day, are we sure there’s not another day in the week where we would’ve needed them more? Are we sure we’re actually going to work enough to ensure we wouldn’t be wasting this?’

Like- I need them. The difference between when I do and do not have access to my ADHD meds is huge. Originally I told myself ‘Well, we got through high school without them, maybe we’ll be okay again’, but the difference there is like- I wasn’t GOOD at high school. I just barely scraped by, and that was fine, because I wasn’t delusional enough to imagine I had a big fancy future ahead of me. High school was an unfortunate obstacle, but it wasn’t actually important. I just had get through it each day and go home to problem solve my family’s actual problems.

But I’m not IN high school anymore, and the responsibilities I have actually DO matter now. ‘Good enough’ isn’t good enough. I’m the only one who’s had a solid job in the last ten years, and now that the job is ending, I need to be able to get hired somewhere else. I need people to be able to trust me enough that they’ll take a chance on hiring me, and when I’m unmedicated for long periods of time... shit, I wouldn’t hire me. It’s not that I don’t try, it’s not that I don’t want to do well, it’s just that weird shit happens. The dishwasher gets run without soap three times in a row before I remember to do it properly. I get lost trying to take the bus home from downtown and end up wandering around the city for hours before finally getting back with the worst sunburn imaginable. Just going through day to day life is a gamble, because I don’t know if it’s going to be a good day or a bad one, and the bad ones are really, really bad.

There’s huge gaps in between when I can get my prescriptions refilled. I have to stretch them out. I have to calculate which days will cause the least damage if I fuck up, and which days I need to be at my best. And on the days when I take them, I can’t help worrying that if (Please God IF) somebody finally hires me- what do I do if I run out while working? How do I hide this? How do I convince them to keep me on?

I was told part of why this is happening is because during the pandemic, people whose ADHD used to be manageable without meds because they had a rigid day to day schedule started needing something, anything, in order to do shit properly. And it’s not nice think, because I know how fucking hard this is for all of us, but I can’t help being a little resentful. 

You get to go back to your rigid schedule, and you don’t need this anymore. It was a crutch for you, not crucial like it is for those of us who were NEVER able to manage without it, who couldn’t do the Just Stay Disciplined route, and now the FDA has decided that the possibility someone could be abusing the drugs instead of using them the way they’re prescribed means it’s too dangerous for them to be easily accessible for any of us... but that’s not your problem anymore.

You get to go back to your normal life after fucking ruining mine.

[radioactivecallista]

The drivers license renewal system in my state is fucked up, and I’m not even going to get into the fucked-up-ness of appointments just to renew a license and all the requirements for that, and the months-long wait for the next one. I’m going to bitch about the smaller problems that could VERY EASILY be solved if anybody wanted to actually make things better. Clearly they do not.

1. Print the new license on-site instead of making the person wait up to 10 business days to get it mailed. My old employer could make new security badges in 30-60 seconds. You can have a printer at every DMV (probably two printers, given the low reliability of printers in general) and make the new cards right there.

2. Failing that, put an official seal on the temporary printed license. Maybe have it notarized or something like that. Because nobody accept temporary licenses for anything. They have some limited function, I guess - if you get pulled over you can say “see, my license isn’t expired, it was renewed last week” and maybe the cop will check and then not ticket you for having an expired license. But you can’t use it to pick up medication that requires an ID, you can’t buy alcohol with it, you can’t really use it because everyone is like “lol how do I know it’s not fake.” So put some special seal on it and make it a crime to copy the seal, and amend TABC, drug, banking, etc. laws so that if someone accepts a temporary ID with the seal and it otherwise seems legit, they can’t be held liable if it turned out to be a fake, the person with the fake is the one who gets fined.

This whole thing is stupid. I need to pick up a Schedule 2 prescription. I can’t pick it up until my new license arrives in the mail because an expired card with a current, valid paper card isn’t good enough. Fuck you. I’ll live, but I’ll be in more pain than necessary because it’s not bad enough to justify an expensive hospital trip but it’s still very unpleasant and an unnecessarily cruel situation brought about by overly picky ID laws and shitty procedures. And by the time I get my license I’ll probably have healed enough from the antibiotics and acid reducers that the painkillers will be pointless.

I DID try to get in before it expired in March. In December the closest appointment I could get was mid-March, but then they didn’t accept my proof of residency and legal status (seriously?) so I had to do it over and the next available appointment - 30 miles away! - was June. Next one locally was late August, nope no thanks, I’ll just travel a bit. Also they didn’t even ask me for proof of residency at the second place but they did make me prove I wasn’t an “undocumented immigrant.” First of all, it’s a driver’s license, not an application to run for President in 2024, so who cares? Second, I’ve had a license in this state since 1997 - why do you suddenly give a shit now about where I was born? It doesn’t affect my ability to drive. I could have been born on the Moon for all it matters, I clearly passed my driving test and eye exam.

[vegafiction]

Trans healthcare in this country is a fucking joke.

You know. I had a meeting with a doctor to start GHAT back in October 18th.

It’s been about a month since then and I still haven’t started because

1.) my insurance company didn’t approve the first prescription

2.) After they didn’t approve of it, my doctor had to change it to the one that my insurance company did cover. (She did that no problem.)

3.) Once she did that, my insurance company gave the okay, and you’d think that would be enough but, no wait! There’s more.

Turns out the pharmacy has to preorder the medication, and when they tried to, it was on back order until January :D

And when I called to ask what the fuck was going on (because, mind you, their phone lines are shit and you can’t understand a god damn thing people are saying on the phone) they told me that the medication WASNT APPROVED. EVEN THOUGH SOMEONE ELSE SAID IT WAS AND IT WAS ON BACK ORDER?

I’m so confused.

The woman on the phone who left me the message said I had the option of going to a difference pharmacy to see if they have my medication in stock, and while I don’t fault her for the suggestion, the reason why I use them as my pharmacy is because I am agoraphobic.

If it were as simple as leaving my town to find a better pharmacy, i would do it in a heartbeat. But alas, that’s not how my brain works.

I just want to get my hormones man. God damn. Fuck people who made testosterone a schedule III drug. And fuck people who made it difficult for Medicaid users to get medication in the first place.

This country really hates the low-income disabled queer community and it fucking shows.

[poppyknitt]

can’t stop thinking about how i’ve been so heavily brainwashed that all drugs are bad by the school system that i hear about someone taking medication and i jump to “how does it affect you” instead of “how does it help you”. i never express this openly but it genuinely upsets me that we as a society associate medication with bad things instead of what it should be — physical and mental aids. This also applies to weed and (microdoses of) ketamine. These are things that we know help some people with their minds, and yet they’re illegal and heavily stigmatized because they have other effects. And sure, ketamine IS dangerous, but that’s when you’re not microdosing it. We have studies going on RIGHT NOW that are showing that ketamine, when microdosed, is actually beneficial to depressed folks. Who knows what other benefits it could have? Hell, what benefits do other drugs have when microdosed? How can we use these things to actually help our society instead of detriment it by pushing them away? I just. I think about this sometimes because I wonder how the world would be if we actually tried to help our (much) less than fortunate folk.

(and before you ask ‘why don’t you start the research yourself’ i would if i could. But I have a handful of issues keeping me from taking even the first step into that field.)

Just. Stop to think about this, okay? Instead of treating addiction as a form of coping we need to help guide someone away from (and to a better form of coping hopefully), we treat it as a horrible disease we have to get rid of. But why can’t we just give these people access to the therapies they need in the places they need them in, instead of forcing these people to recover on their own? Money. We started all this shit for money, as far as I’m aware. Oh yeah, and racism, but I’m not going to dive into that because I’m white and I don’t have the right to speak on POC issues. So let’s stick to the topic of money: We (this is a hypothesis I have, I am basing this on my prior knowledge of the world) started forcing people to recover from their addictions alone because that generates money in the form of relapses, right? We (the people with power over this issue, really) can’t just let these individuals get better because we know that them struggling is going to get us more money. And sure, relapse is part of recovery, but in my experience with mental health issues, taking steps, leaps, or strides backwards because you don’t have the help you need is so much worse than taking steps, leaps, or strides backwards when you do have that help, because no one is able to help pull you out. It just seems incredibly horrible to me that we have these issues and yet we do nothing to fix them that actually works because we have taught ourselves that the issues are the fault of the people who have them and not the fault of the chemicals in their brain or whatever.

i don’t have insight on how this affects people with physical disabilities unfortunately but having seen my sister have to go off of weed for proper meds makes me feel a little upset for her because i can see that she’s not as relaxed, and she doesn’t even have a physical disability. so like sure weed probably can’t help your physical symptoms but surely it works to keep your mind off of things? I’ll ask my friends with physical disabilities about this.

If you can’t tell, I am pro-legalization. But not anti-regulation. I think these things should be prescription drugs. I think they need to be heavily regulated but legalized, so that people cannot lace and cannot mix things to make their drugs “better” and exacerbate the clients’ addictions. I think they should be pharmaceuticals. I think they need to be turned into something cheap but effective for the illnesses people are already treating with them, just knocked down on dosage so that they don’t cause addiction as quickly or as horribly. We shouldn’t treat it like we did opioids, of course, but we cannot treat it the way we’ve been treating it. Modern attitudes towards this subject are actively worsening addiction and worsening mental illnesses as a whole. Damage done to people suffering from addiction is damage done to all of us, and we need to remember that as a world. It’s no wonder we have so much going on in the minds of our youth, we keep shoving these horrible, ableist rhetorics down their throats so that when they do inevitably get one of the issues related to the rhetorics, they start to hate themselves for it when in reality they had no control over it.

[061801]

I really want to write out how I feel about this whole situation but it’s extremely hard because I don’t even understand. It’s confusing because he’s an ex who gave me an extremely hard time. I carry a lot of pain and anger because I put down every single wall I had for him to make me build an even bigger one. He cheated on me, gave me pills/drugs, took my prescription drugs, stole valuable things from me, spit in my face literally, made me do things because he knew he could threaten to leave me if I didn’t do them and I’d be sad, lied about random shit that didn’t even matter. Looking back I don’t even understand how I got so hooked. I was young and naive that’s really the only explanation. I had no family, no friends, no money. I literally had nothing. This guy who I viewed as a tough guy started calling me pretty and asked for my number and choosing to hangout with me instead of his friends. I fell so hard idk why but I gave it my all as if we were going to be forever. Part of me is super embarrassed because he would cheat on me and I would literally cry and take him back every single time because I just wanted to be with him. I hoped that maybe if he cheated on me enough one day he’ll get bored and realize I’m the one for him. I guess I could say I enjoyed watching him absolutely torment everybody around him (cuz he just loved pushing buttons like that) and then having him desire me and wanna kiss me and have sex. I felt like a special girl for a little bit. I remember being super shy with him too like I couldn’t even open my mouth cuz I didn’t know what to say. So he basically talked the whole time and I would just turn red and blush so much. I quickly realized though that I was just another girl to him. Up until a few years ago when we reconnected for the 100000th time, he had 2 other girlfriends besides me and he told me he missed how much I loved him and no girl ever cared about him like I did and I didn’t deserve how he treated me and I was so excited because I thought he came to his senses and wanted to be with me. Fast forward January of this year, I found out he does the same thing to at least 2 other girls. It didn’t take me very long to realize he still had eyes for any other pretty girl that walked by but for some reason I thought I was still at least that girl that took care of him. No apparently not. I wasn’t actually ever special at all. I just basically convinced myself I was and believed everything he said. That’s another difficult part about this; just because he wasn’t my boyfriend, doesn’t mean he was a bad person. Therefore I’m being extremely selfish and I know it. But seeing all the exes and the posts about him and how close he was to them literally fuels a fire in my heart that I could never explain to anyone. Seeing them have access to him the way I did makes me feel like I’ve had something ripped away from me. The only way I could try to compare it is like having a child and the child likes his step mom more and doesn’t give a fuck about you and the fact that you literally gave birth to him. That’s not even a fair comparison because a child is way more significant than a boyfriend or girlfriend but I was so infatuated with the idea of being in love with him I can’t explain another way. I feel like he was MINE and I just wasn’t able to keep him to myself. So a part of my depression about this is because I’ll never get to see where his life goes, I’ll never get to see if he eventually reaches out to me again. I’ll never get an apology. At the same time I don’t ever have to see him get married and have kids with someone else. Towards the end of us talking I just felt defeated like this is never going to work. The drugs took over. But no matter how I felt, when I saw his name; my body just does something different. My heart beats fast, my stomach drops, it’s not just a name or a person. It’s the name of someone I held on a pedestal. Nobody will ever understand the love I had for him

[confessionsofketamine]

Last month I posted that I bet you didn’t save me the ketamine you told me about. I asked you a week ago, and I found out not only did you take the one you promised me, but you took your entire prescription within 10 days. It’s supposed to last 30. You knew I was going off my antidepressant so I could stop being sick. You knew the ketamine you were going to give me was going to help me through the withdrawal. You knew all of it, and you didn’t save it for me. You left me without the net you told me you had for me. You told me you had a parachute strapped up and you let me fucking jump. You lied to my face more than once and I’m not sure how we can ever go back. I didn’t sign up to be married to a drug addict. I did sign up for thick and thin so you have a decision to make. It’s going to boil down to the ketamine or me. Which one do you want more? Because now I’m asking you to choose. It’s already ruining my life, so what’s my marriage? Right? You literally chose to take the medication you were supposed to be saving me. That shows me you care more about you, than me. And we were supposed to be a team. We were supposed to talk. You just did it and told me about it later. You think there are no consequences to your actions but every single night that I cry myself to sleep, alone…is one more nail in the coffin of our marriage because it’s so clear you don’t give a fuck about me anymore. You’re literally letting us go broke. You hide from me all day. I couldn’t even tell you how long it’s been since you’ve kissed me. Last time I kissed you too hard and you said your tooth hurt and then didn’t kiss me again. What a crock of shit. It’s all lies and excuses. You don’t want to be with me anymore. Actions speak louder than words and we both know you haven’t been saying shit.

I think you forget I save everything. I have every conversation. I have every time and reason you have turned me down for sex. I have every day you have made me cry. I don’t know that I feel mourning anymore. Now I’m just getting mad.

[rustedskyprisms]

Okay so I was reading this article about Neudexta (prescription medication that is DXM/quinidine-it’s used for pseudobulbar affect (the condition that causes uncontrollable laughing or crying)) and it’s talking about how research is being done using this drug combination on treating agitation in dementia patients.

Anyway, the author of it got sent a letter from some woman who was angry with them for mentioning in this article that DXM itself is found in cough syrup, because she had a son who started using it to “calm down” and was now an addict, basically saying this author needs to put a disclaimer about that…..

It’s like, I’m sorry that happened to your child, but holy shit this is not about you….I hate how so many people can’t hear about research involving drugs without involving their own biases. And uh, this isn’t coming from a lack of understanding on this topic because, well, yeah. Like I don’t even think it would be bad to mention it has a potential for abuse, but this is about medical use. And the author wasn’t even saying, “go try it on your own using cough syrup”, they were just saying that to give more information.