Question: How Do You StockPile Prescription Medication?
We’ve posted a lot of how-to articles on this site and hope you have enjoyed them. But now it’s time for me to ask a how-to question of my own: How can I stockpile medication? I had my thyroid removed (they told me it was a malignant tumor, which turned out to be a benign goiter… @$%* medical industry; now they have me hooked for LIFE) and I must take thyroid medication to survive. I could go a month or two without it if I had to, but it wouldn’t be any fun. Much longer than that and I’d run the risk of slipping into a comma and, eventually, death. I have no thyroid tissue left at all.
What happens if I can’t afford – or more likely – can’t GET health insurance? My wife was denied private coverage from all of the big providers because she had “migraines” so I can’t imagine they’d cover me. If I lost my job I’d lose health insurance. God Bless America. But don’t get me started on that because I’m sure we won’t all agree… Or what happens if we have war on our soil, some major disaster – or for whatever reason I can’t just go to a pharmacy and pick up this medication?
The point is I can have all the solar panels on my house I want; all the fresh spring water I can drink; a pantry full of two-years worth of canned food; a shotgun, a rifle and a 4-wheel-drive, and all of the skills I need to live off-the-grid and/or underground or in the wilderness – BUT, I can’t live without one little pill every night. I’m sure there are plenty of other people in my situation, including a country full of diabetics. When there is a will there’s a way so I’m asking what ideas you have.
Someone mentioned finding an underground chemist to make it for me. Someone else suggested I go to several doctors and get scripts to buy the stuff (not using my insurance card) to stockpile. I’m not sure if that second idea is legal, but it sounds like a good place to start after simply “asking your doctor”. In addition to the stockpiling, any tips on storage would be helpful.
PS: Saying that we won’t need meds because our lifestyle will be healthier when we go back into the woods, or talking about stockpiling OTC meds isn’t going to help. We’re talking about medications that your life depends on, for whatever reason, and which you can’t just go buy legally without a prescription.
Thoughts?
I’m not suggesting this for most of your scenarios, but if the modern medical establishment came to an end, it might be worth knowing how to replace modern medicines with either herbal or other home cures.
Specifically, a quick search of the internet turns up this advice for thyroid:
“I’m a health practitioner and you should know that thyroid hormone is derived from 4 parts iodine and one part tyrosine.”
http://www.steadyhealth.com/is_there_herbal_supplements_for_thyroid_medications_t60431.html
It seems like you might be able to stockpile the components, the equipment to titrate with, and make it yourself.
Like I said at the beginning of this comment, though, I wouldn’t mess around with backyard chemistry for such an important part of your health unless it was a *real* emergency. Most drugs that are important enough that we consider their lack life-threatening are dicey to replace with home remedies.
Perhaps more helpfully, I know a retired person who is on antidepressants and knew he was about to hit the Medicare donut hole, during which he wouldn’t be able to afford the medicine for a certain length of time. He saved a couple of pills out of each bottle for a while before that, cutting back his own dosage a little bit, and managed to slide through.
You could probably get away with telling your doctor you lost your bottle of medicine once or twice.
But the problem with stockpiling is expiration dates. I don’t know how long drugs last?
Oh, I should also add, you can get medicine without health insurance. There are free and sliding scale health clinics and even the emergency room. Yes, you might get lower quality care, but if all you’re doing is testing the thyroid hormone levels in your blood and getting a prescription for more medicine, I’d say anyone can do that.
Maybe you should just figure out how much it would cost to go to the minimum number of doctor visits and pay for the medicine yourself, and then stockpile the cash?
Yet another option is to cultivate a doctor friend to write the prescriptions for you….
Anna,
Good tips here. I don’t know if I want to mess with making the meds myself, but if I knew a chemist… That’d be a good road to consider. As for expiration dates, I think what I’d do is get a stockpile going and then rotate out as I get new meds. So my “stockpile” would always be rotating old meds out and new meds in.
Thanks!
True story, once I was out of town and my luggage was lost (and never recovered) on greyhound. Called the doc he sent a new script into a local Pharmacy where I was at. These things happen. I ended up because of that with an extra weeks worth of pills. (Because I smartly did not pack the entire bottle just enough for my trip.) It was totally legit and I only had to do it once. I personally would be very nervous stock piling anything like that with so many drug addicts in this country so unlikely this will ever be a real scenario for me. But my question to you is… How often do you travel?
You seem like a very *forgetful* person!
If you can get the doctor to write for quantities of 100, you may well get stock bottles which have the manufacturer’s expiration dates printed on them giving you up to a couple years on each bottle (unopened, standard storage conditions below 86F) instead of the standard 1 year marked by pharmacies for legal reasons.
-Pharmacist
My last piece of advice — I promise! Mark told me that he’d read somewhere that you can often get certain human medications from veterinarians without quite so much rigamarole. So, if you can convince a vet that your dog has a messed up thyroid…
I don’t have health insurance because I’m self employed and it’s too costly. You can’t stop death it will get you no matter what. It’s just a matter of when and how. Live life. Enjoy every day with no regrets. Presciption medicine does more harm than good over the long haul. Get yourself healthy on your own. Eat well, exercise and grow your own medicinal herbs. Check out the book Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. Take classes on herbs go to health food stores, talk to holistice people and learn. Man has lived 1000′s of years without presciption drugs why can’t you?
Marcia I think that’s the best tip so far. I do travel frequently and I’m sure I could call in that I forgot my pills maybe twice a year. But the question is, if I’m only out of town for a week will the doctor only call me in a prescription for a week? Hmm…
Maybe the best way to go is to just start combining all of these ideas together.
Anna they’d probably want to do bloodwork on my dog to test his/her thyroid hormone levels. Know any vet friends !? Maybe I should make some.
Maria, to answer your question: because I don’t have a thyroid gland. It is a very important organ responsible for regulating pretty much your entire metabolism. If you removed your kidneys or liver I doubt you could live very long just by eating healthy foods and taking herbs.
Homeopathy.
I’m in the midst of doing the same thing for my wife, who’s rather dependent on several different medicines.
First, check with your pharmacy to see how often the insurance will cover the prescription. Depending on your insurance and the prescription, it might be every 28 days, or every 21…it’s a slow way to build up, but it’s better than nothing. Be careful that you don’t run into an annual maximum, though.
Also, check to see how much it is to buy out the whole prescription at once. The price goes down as the number of pills go up, particularly with generics–I had one prescription where it was cheaper than the co-pays to buy out the whole six months at once, and that didn’t go through the insurance at all. If it was a drug I’d wanted to stockpile, I probably could have had another prescription written (be honest with your doctor and pharmacist about what you’re doing and why) and then gotten the regular fills through the insurance and used them to keep the buffer high. Call different pharmacies though, as prices can differ, and those add up when you start talking about a six month supply.
Another option is changing prescriptions a bit. My wife takes one pill where she can take up to 200mg a day, but she usually only takes 100. I’m going to start getting the prescription filled every month regardless. If there’s flexibility in your dosing, work with that–just make sure you get pills that can be cut or have the prescription written specifically for the lower dose pills. Again, a friendly doctor helps wonders. Also, if your dose changes, the insurance companies generally have to fill it again, even if it’s sooner than they normally would. Pick up a month’s supply of your normal dose a couple days before you get the “new” dose.
If you’re on a nice fancy designer drug, obviously, there are fewer options. But drug companies often give samples of these pills to doctors. Ask all your doctors if they get any such samples, and if they will save them for you.
Meanwhile, lets all hope the small bits of insurance reform (not health care reform) that got through last long enough for the pre-exisiting condition rule to kick in….
I just found out that they used to make thyroid medication by grinding up pig thyroids, drying them, turning them into a powder and putting it in a capsule. If ANYONE has a recipe on how to make your own desiccated thyroid extract I would greatly appreciated. it. This could be the answer to my particular question, although it wouldn’t help other people in similar situations with other drugs.
Too much or too little thyroid hormones will cause problems so it would be important to get the dosage right. I’m sure it wouldn’t be as exact as prescribed medication, but in a pinch it could work if I had a recipe for exactly how much to use and how to prepare it.
Most of my family is in healthcare, and like the pharmacist said, most of the pills have a longer shelf life than on the script bottle you get. After the expiration date, most pills start to ‘weaken’, that is, not as potent as when prescribed. Follow the pharmacists’ advice, store them in a cooler area, keep them in the dark if possible. On a side note, you may want to start looking at some of the foods you are eating. Do some research on soy-based or soy containing products, as there is some linking migraines to soy. Obviously, stress is another major factor.
I have used vet meds for years swine is closest to human per pound of body weight is used for dosage. I also use to put it bluntly fish meds and chicken. You need to study to understand which med is for what in humans VS vet meds. I don’t know about thyroid but animals have them too! You can purchase out of date books on this matter.
The PTB have been trying to stop us fro the purchase of such meds over the years. They have removed and RXed many so online purchase is not available or they have just changed the name or used a generic name for the med so we humans do not recognize it in vet terms. If you look up any human med online you can transpose it to vet med, weather its available to purchase without RX is another story, however my doctor friend said they are the same and unless they start cutting it with inferior ingredients which i have not found in the meds I have purchased a med is a med. Modernsurvival.com and survivalblog.com both have many resources of explanation .
I too am on thyroid-but I have been switched to amour thyroid- as it has a t3 in it- but have been wondering the same thing- it would be good to stockpile, but how to do it? I really like Joe H.’s idea about looking into buying 6 months at a time, and working with your doctor to get a stockpile up. While I still have a thyroid- it no longer works like it used to- thanks to prescription drugs(and I still debate if keeping vision in my eye was worth it, and why the bleep the doctors and pharmacists never told me that potential effect….and it was one of those- either take this drug or go blind, no other drugs available)— so I wouldn’t be quite as bad off- but your right- you either take your little pill, or die, and there is no way to change your diet to fix it.
So… as for mixing your own for the pig’s thyroid- a couple of things I have learned- always get name brand, don’t get generic, because sometimes the differences are enough to cause issues-even if it is a small difference, and supposedly the same dose. I don’t know how exactly to make it, but I had a pharmacist compound natural amour thyroid for me as we had started on the same dose I was on of other stuff, and that concentration isn’t pre-made. So I know it can be done- I know he went to special classes to learn to make natural compounds, so maybe you could find info out on making it. I would also look at switching to an amour thyroid and work with your doc to find the right dose-it will vary depending on the person as it has more than just the t-4 that the synthetics have. I also learned that for some people, they can get their standard blood tests down to the ‘normal’ range, but still have problems. The reason is because the problem in the thyroid cycle isn’t with the t-4 production. Maybe more info than you were looking for- but if your looking for more, I am happy to share- just let me know.
And if you do find out how to make the natural version- do share
Take a vacation to Mexico. Visit the local pharmacy and buy any medication you want without a prescription and for a lot cheaper than you could ever buy it in the US.
I just had another thought about the thyroid— so knowing the the human thyroid is a small gland, you could presume that the pig’s isn’t THAT much bigger-so how many pigs would it take each month just to keep us going? We would have to know lots of people with pigs. Makes me think if we can’t stockpile- we could be screwed?
have you looked into Indian and european pharmaceutical companies? perhaps that’s a possibility. Good Luck!
Desiccated thyroid extract should be available at your local health food store. If they don’t have it on hand ordering it shouldn’t be a problem. As for dosages, find a naturapath to talk to. An online search might be in order depending on where you live but well worth the time.
Laura – YOU. ROCK!
I found this thanks to your advice:
http://www.nutri-meds.com/Nutri_Meds_Desiccated_Porcine_Thyroid_Capsules_p/nm-g-ptc.htm
I had to sort through a few offerings to find the right one. Many used bovine or sheep thyroids. Pig / porcine is much closer to ours. Also many included desiccated adrenal glands and other things I didn’t need or want. This stuff is supposed to be good for two years on the shelf. I’ll keep taking my prescriptions but it’s good to know that I have this alternative to fall back on if anything should happen.
Thanks!
I myself have been looking to stockpile thyroid medicine. I have no thyroid and my doctor is not a good one who listens to me or tries to help me get better. he says take and pill and you should be fine. My heath has gone downhill. Because me and my son are on SSI we have medicaid. I have few choices. My child is 15 and has seizures that i believe were triggered ny vaccine. My weight has gone up-my cholesterol and blood pressure has sky-rocketed and now I have pre-diabetes. I wish i knew back then what I know now and I would have done alternative treatments instead of removing thyroid. I now have 2 sons who are ill. The other one is 20 and I took him to emergency with high blood pressure-high fever and he now needs to lose weight and change his diet. One problem is being Native American and having health issues that get so bad. Suffice it to say I want to live long enough to raise my son. Doctor will not discuss changing to armour.
Ebert,
I’m so glad you were able to find something!!!
I hope/pray all is well with you and yours for years to come!
Laura
What about chronic pain meds which are so very impossible to get? Also RA and thyroid? Same answers or different? Scares the @#$% out of me that I will go thru not only the pain but the withdrawls that come from long term use. I am foe pain and pro drug. Whatever works to help me live a semi normal life.
Jackie I feel for anyone who really, and I mean “REALLY” needs pain medication to get through life because that’s one thing they make it very, very difficult to stockpile.
My wife and mother in law both have severe asthma and are unfortunately pretty dependent on prescription medications (there are some herbal remedies that help a lot but emergencies require and inhaler). My mother in law gets her prescriptions through a mail order program where she gets three months worth of meds. The trick to this is that she can have it renewed more often than that. My wife and I currently don’t have health insurance and we have been giving her mom money for an inhaler every once in a while because she doesn’t go through them that fast and can replace them faster than she needs. This may be worth looking into for you especially if you thought you could safely cut back your dosage just a little bit. You may be able to come up with quite a stock pile in a year or two.
I am hypothyroid and take a low dose of natural dessicated thyroid. maybe you could research how they use the natural thyroid gland and see if the local butcher, hunter or farmer could give you some for dehydrating. powder it and then put it capsules. I have often wondered about this myself. But I still have my thyroid gland.
I have found that many uncontrolled (non narcotic) medications are available from chinese chemical suppliers. Make sure to look for the generic name of your med and also make sure it is USP grade. If your medicine is measured in mcg’s Id try to put a small amount, maybe a 1/4 gram in a liquid solution of 1-5% benzyl alcohol for sterility and as asolvent and the rest an oil of some kind or bacteriostatic water. I would do this since mcg’s are nearly impossible to measure with any scale you can buy and with a good shake of the bottle before use you are most likely going to get pretty damn close doses from a multi draw vial and insulin syringe. Then simply drink it at time of dosing, mix it in a drink, or even buy a bulk supply of empty gelatin capsules from a supplier like Capsuline or similar company. Then at the time you take the med put it in the capsule and take it like a regular pill. I’ve never done it with a med that means life or death but have had good success with the meds i’ve used for other things.
That was crazy to find this because I too have had my thyroid removed and the dr had to take the parathyroids that manage calcium, on top of that I have to take BP meds and vitamin suppliments. And I hate living like this, but I cant just stop taking the meds. The best I ever had was a doctor that would perscribe enough for 3 months.
Just wanted to share this:
My dog has seizures and needs valium to stop them when it happens. I called to get a refill from the vet specailist I go to and they told me they didn’t have any valium that there was a national backorder for it. I had to call my regular vet and another emergency animal hospital to see if they had it.
the regular vet didn’t but thank God the other did and i was able to get it filled.
I have also heard that some medicines for cancer patients are getting hard to find,(humans).
People really need to think about this especailly if something ever happens in America where people aren’t able to get any meds
at all.
I think he means how to keep the pills solvent or to keep their strength is the question!!!!! Anyone can get thyroid pills. In the Philippines they are OTC without script.
(I cant believe the last lady’s dog is on Valium!!! ha,ha) Now I have heard it all!!
I usually take Synthroid. But I’ve taken the generic thyroid drug in the past and did well with it.
Last year I wanted to stockpile thyroid meds, so I had my physician write me a prescroption for the generic equivalent – Levothyroxine. I went to Target, where they offer the generic drug for $10 for 90 days, and bought a year’s supply for only $40. I was able to buy a year’s supply because the transaction didn’t involve my insurance company and therefore didn’t have a limitation on how much I could purchase.
I’m thrilled to find this discussion, as my greatest fear when considering TEOTWAWKI is that fact that I too no longer have a thyroid – was removed when I nearly died of undiagnosed Graves Disease, which I was born with.
**The following is not to be taken as medical advice, but for informational purposes only – so you will understand the most likely effects of a long duration without medication – which is much longer than any medical doctor will advise you can live without them.**
I was forced to go 7.25 months without my little live-giving pill(no $/no insurance), and watched my body slowly deteriorate with these effects:
I bloated as if gaining weight – but didn’t, and my intestinal tract stop functioning efficiently which caused my stomach to bloat also; my eyesight was greatly affected, as was my skin, hair & nails. My eyelids ‘drooped over’, eyes felt swollen & my face bloated, vision deteriorated; skin dried out & became scaly, and during the 6th month – an itchy, un-colored raised rash (think ‘goosebumps’) appeared on my upper back/shoulder area – slowly spreading to my feet; my hair thinned, then began to lightly fall out – lots of hair in my hairbrush – but no clumps, eyelashes thinned, and I no longer needed to shave my legs or underarms (the hair on my forearms broke off as well – felt like razor stubble); I couldn’t sleep longer than 3-4 hrs at a time – almost as if I didn’t need to anymore; the glands in my throat swelled & cause me problems speaking (near the end of the 4th month – think swollen throat from strep infection, but without pain or soreness); plus the worst of all — I developed Gout in my feet, which was extremely painful.
I finally found a free clinic that gave me a 90 day rx, and am please to report all symptoms have reversed themselves, although my eyesight appears to have been permanently, but minimally, affected & my eyelashes have not thickened again – three months later. And the rash took nearly 120 days to dry up & slough off completely. **Also important to remember: your heart & other organs will be affected as well, although you may never experience or notice any outward signs of it.
What I learned:
1. We can go far longer than we’ve been led to believe without medication, which has convinced me that skipping a pill once a week (I personally wouldn’t do it more than 4-8x out of 30 day month’s suppply) is a no-brainer. But, it can be done IN A DIRE SITUATION, with minimal harm to our health. The key here is to evenly space it out. **CAUTION – I was otherwise healthy, so those with other underlying health issues will need to evaluate their overall health when making any personal decisions to skip medications (OF ANY KIND). DO YOUR HOMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE THYROID’S FUNCTION IS, AND HOW IT AFFECTS YOUR BODY’S OTHER SYSTEMS.
2. Adding vitamins & other natural supplements daily are absolutely essential to helping our bodies with functions a missing thyroid once did. And will keep us healthy longer should we need to go without our daily med.
3. Drink LOTS of water if going without, to help your body process & flush toxins efficiently, and help your other vital organs work optimally.
4. Do everything possible to keep your self healthy on a daily basis, thus minimizing the effects of a possible long-term duration without medication.
—->I hope this helps alleviate some fears about our life dependency on Levothyoxine (or whatever you brand take), and the possible need to go without. I was always lead to believe that it couldn’t be more than a few days without, until I learned firsthand it could be months.
And it bears repeating –I didn’t do this as an experiment on myself, I had no choice. *I’m NOT suggesting anyone try this for any reason – just sharing my forced experience & the consequences to my health.
Jodi,
I know you are American because this is the only developed country in the world where someone would have to go through hell like that for 6 months because they couldn’t afford a pill. God bless America.
OK, I’m with you.
I stockpile Amoxocillin, Cipro and a few other “matenance” meds for the long term.
Here’s how to LEGALLY Do IT!
First, you need a regular prescription from your Doctor. Have it filled at your regular pharmacy LEGALLY. Then tell them something like “I don’t trust your computers with my records, can you print me a paper copy of this prescription for my home records?”…..IF THEY DO, they might write something like “This is not a fillable RX”…but this is OK.
Now, take the paper copy home, scan it into your computer…use Photoshop to remove the hand writing, and save the result electronically.
LAST STEP….Send it to a LEGAL and LEGIT Canadian pharmacy and order the maximum refills…..do this with 3-4 LEGAL Canadian Pharmacies.
Adding up what you get from the US and Canadian pharmacies, you can stockpile enough to last 6 mos-1 year. LEGALLY!
Thyroid medicine, especially the generic is cheap. Often paying full price is less than a lot of people’s insurance co-pays. Ask your doctor to write the script for 2x the amt. you need daily and split in half on scoreline. Tell him you want to have extra meds on hand in case of emergencies & are tight financially. All the government preparedness sites suggest you have extra everything on hand with all the ‘normal’ weather catastrophies lately. Ask him to write your medication for 90 days at a time with refills. (levothyroxin 100mg., 1x daily, x90, 3 refills) I was going to suggest too, asking for an extra script to price check Canadian Pharmacy although it’s probably just as cheap. My TSH tests show some fluctuation in my thyroid levels. Like after one test I was on .88mg.,but I was low the next time and they upped it to 100mg. If this is your case, get tested before your first refill runs low and then save it if your next dose is changed. It’ll be close enough. Hell, I am on about 13 medications-mostly psyc drugs. I would have a VERY negative reaction should I have to cold turkey all of them. I am considering ECT (watch Dr. Oz?) for depression and anxiety, sleep etc. just so I don’t have to be concerned about it. Otherwise, if I didn’t stock up on some St. John’s Wart or whatever, I guess I’ll just go through withdrawals and pray God sustains me. I’ll probably be so busy just surviving I won’t have time to be depressed or I’ll just let whatever happens happens. No Fear! Some medicinal marjiuana is easy to stash-depending what state you live in-and I think it could get me through whatever! Good luck!