Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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It's a big pain. The prescription line at my pharmacy is never shorter than 15 minutes. Thus the drug is $11/month but costs me $60 in time to wait in that line. Meanwhile, other drugs are just mailed to me, including my prescriptions.

The prescription line is always fun. I remember some dude coughing on everyone, picking up his cell phone, "oh it was positive? great, I'm in line to get the medication" referring to COVID. In my opinion, the easiest place to get sick is waiting in the prescription line. Yet another tax on congestion sufferers.

Having said all that, your doctor can write you a prescription and all the restrictions go away, including the ID check. It has always delayed my fills even further so we don't bother anymore.

The most positive outcome from buying pseudoephedrine in line was being told "hey, your ID expires tomorrow" which was a good catch. I wasn't paying any attention to that. (I don't drive, so it's just a piece of plastic with my name. But necessary for paying taxes online in NYS.)

This is a complete tangent, but FWIW: you can pay taxes in NY with an expired license.

Source: I've been paying taxes in NY with a learner's permit that's been expired for well over a decade.

Edit: I've also used said expired permit to buy pseudoephedrine. In my experience, they get frustrated and put random garbage into the tracking system when the card doesn't verify, demonstrating that it's all theater. It did take a while, though, so your point about this being a waste of time holds.

> Thus the drug is $11/month but costs me $60 in time to wait in that line

In what reality? You were not being paid $60 to grocery shop or whatever else you might have done with that 15 minutes. Nor did it actually reduce your bank account by $60 to wait 15 minutes. If you applied this logic to everything in life, reading this very comment probably "cost" you a dozen bucks too. What a fun way to live?

> Meanwhile, other drugs are just mailed to me, including my prescriptions.

How often are your anticipating needing pseudoephedrine? For most people it's a once a year, at most, thing.

I take it every day; deviated septum and allergic to everything even after decades of immunotherapy. Maybe I should get surgery. But this is easier.

You can't take pseudoephedrine every day. Nor is pseudoephedrine used for allergies - it is a decongestant, not an antihistamine. Nor does immunotherapy "solve" allergies.

A simple google search before posting would have made your fictitious scenario a little bit more believable.

Guess what happens when allergens irritate the inside of your nose? You get congested.

Guess what people take for allergies - drugs that actually prevent reactions. Allergic reactions that effect the nose are almost always going to result in discharge, aka. a runny nose. It's the body's natural way of removing the allergen. Pseudoephedrine doesn't help with this at all.

The side affects of prolonged pseudoephedrine use (usually defined as more than 7 days, btw) are far more serious than a stuffy nose.

You cannot even purchase enough pseudoephedrine to use every day over a full month. The government restricts maximum grammage per month - and no doctor is going to prescribe long-term use of pseudoephedrine to "help with allergies".

That is to say I don't believe your story at all. But I get it - googling these things before you posted would have "cost" you approximately $24 or something something something...

Sudafed (the working version) was one of the go-tos for seasonal allergies, alongside Claritin. Not everyone reacts to allergens the same way. You'd take Claritin daily for the month or so, then Sudafed for a day or two when it got bad.

Guess what happens when people take antihistamines... Lovely, lovely side effects. Side effects which are generally equally as annoying as the original problem.

If one can treat the symptoms just as easily as the cause and pseudoephedrine doesn't make them feel like a drugged-out zombie, just guess which drug people are going to take...

...and yes, doctors actually will write prescriptions for pseudoephidrine because they're generally pretty sure their patients aren't using it to make meth. I know three people who've gotten such prescriptions, and I've been tempted to do the same thing myself.

> Nor is pseudoephedrine used for allergies

Technically true but it is often paired with loratadine in, e.g., Claritin-D. Many allergy sufferers also get congested sinuses.

Btw I got septum surgery and turbinate reduction and it was life-changing. Previously used antihistamines and nasal steroids every day. Even when my nose produces mucus, its doesn’t clog now. Procedure cost me $100 through Kaiser (cost them probably $75k if you believe all the various documents they sent me).

> cost them probably $75k

No, that's the inflated list price that's only paid by people with an emergency while out of network or similar unfortunates -- not insurance companies.

You're kidding, right? For people with allergies and/or chronic sinusitis, it's a thing they're taking for about a quarter of the year off and on. ...and they _will_ practically "cut you off" if you buy enough to be taking it for 45 days straight, no matter how you buy it.

That phenylephrine (which everyone with sinuses knows doesn't do a damn thing) was perpetually being touted as a substitute was just adding insult to injury.

Why don't they just get meth? It works just as well as psuedo and it has a much longer duration.

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