Upped my dosage.
Oct. 25th, 2008 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupMade a trip to the pharmacy and got some more patent medicines. $50 poorer, I left with a bag of cold cures. I even remarked to the pharmacist that its gotten real expensive to have a cold these days. Of course, if I'd been at home I'd have had all this stuff in my medicine chest. Right now I don't even have a chest, just a drawer.
I was struck once again by the differences in drug policies in the US and Canada. Pseudoephedrine is my decongestant of choice for this kind of cold, but its a controlled substance here since, in large quantities, it can be used to make crystal meth. In Canada they ask awkward questions if you buy more than 3 packs of the stuff. Here you have to take a ticket from the shelf to the pharmacist to buy a single pack, and then they want ID and home address and all sorts of things to put in their database of dangerous -- or potentially sick -- people.
I also picked up a Benzedrex inhaler which is an over-the-counter medication here in the US, but is unavailable in Canada because if you're crazy enough to open one up and eat the medicine-soaked-cotton inside, you can get high (or so I'm told).
Of course, its not that Canada has something against immediate highs while the US has something against highs that take chemistry training. In Canada you can buy drugs with codeine in them (which you have to ask the pharmacist for, but are far less controlled that the pseudoephedrine is here), while they are prescription-only here.
I don't get it. There's no pattern to the rules. It just looks like just a bunch of random piecework legislation without any overriding plan or goal, no matter on which side of the border you look. I suspect that the answer is that it IS just a bunch of random piecework legislation.
In any case, after my trip to the pharmacist, and a stop for coffee and a sandwich to see how my tummy would react to food, I came back to the hotel and dosed myself up. So, I'm now feeling significantly better. Not good, mind you, but well enough that I think I can make it to this dinner tonight.
The one thing I'm glad about is that I DIDN'T plunk down $350 US to attend the conference today that the dinner is at the end of. I was sorely tempted, but decided I couldn't justify it. Had I paid that money, I'd have felt I had to attend today and my sickness would have made me miserable during it. Had this dinner been any kind of lesser event, I would have completely blown it off today.
I was struck once again by the differences in drug policies in the US and Canada. Pseudoephedrine is my decongestant of choice for this kind of cold, but its a controlled substance here since, in large quantities, it can be used to make crystal meth. In Canada they ask awkward questions if you buy more than 3 packs of the stuff. Here you have to take a ticket from the shelf to the pharmacist to buy a single pack, and then they want ID and home address and all sorts of things to put in their database of dangerous -- or potentially sick -- people.
I also picked up a Benzedrex inhaler which is an over-the-counter medication here in the US, but is unavailable in Canada because if you're crazy enough to open one up and eat the medicine-soaked-cotton inside, you can get high (or so I'm told).
Of course, its not that Canada has something against immediate highs while the US has something against highs that take chemistry training. In Canada you can buy drugs with codeine in them (which you have to ask the pharmacist for, but are far less controlled that the pseudoephedrine is here), while they are prescription-only here.
I don't get it. There's no pattern to the rules. It just looks like just a bunch of random piecework legislation without any overriding plan or goal, no matter on which side of the border you look. I suspect that the answer is that it IS just a bunch of random piecework legislation.
In any case, after my trip to the pharmacist, and a stop for coffee and a sandwich to see how my tummy would react to food, I came back to the hotel and dosed myself up. So, I'm now feeling significantly better. Not good, mind you, but well enough that I think I can make it to this dinner tonight.
The one thing I'm glad about is that I DIDN'T plunk down $350 US to attend the conference today that the dinner is at the end of. I was sorely tempted, but decided I couldn't justify it. Had I paid that money, I'd have felt I had to attend today and my sickness would have made me miserable during it. Had this dinner been any kind of lesser event, I would have completely blown it off today.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-26 12:06 am (UTC)It's all so random. Sigh.