Adventures In Antihistamine-Land

I strolled into a pharmacy on the west side of Madison yesterday afternoon to buy some allergy pills. Claritin D, to be specific. This was a small shop in a strip mall, and I’d never been there before. But I know from years of experience that to purchase Claritin-D, you’ve got to show your driver’s license, sign a bunch of forms and waivers, and the pharmacist has to do the same.

The feds and their failed war on drugs.

I was the only person in the store and the pharmacist was busy filling a prescription when he looked up and said “can I help you?” “Claritin-D, 24-hour, 30-count box, please” I said. He said “not sure if I’ve got the brand name, but I know I have a generic that’ll work.” As he rummaged through his stock of allergy meds, I removed my driver’s license from my wallet and set it on the counter along with my debit card.

After a moment of examining his stock, he said “I’ve got something that’ll work, but each box is only 12 pills.” “I’ll take two, then”, I said. He glanced down at my driver’s license and debit card and said “you’ve been through the routine before, I take it.” “Yup. I know the drill”, I said.

He consulted some table and said “I can only sell you one box today – two would put you over the daily limit.” I shook my head. “Can’t have you stocking up for your meth lab”, he said, with a smile. I said “oh, no, I do a P-2-P cook.” “Large scale manufacture, huh?” the pharmacist said. I said “the name on my driver’s license is fake; you can call me Heisenberg.”

The pharmacist laughed out loud and said “I loved that show”. The show, of course, is Breaking Bad, and the picture at the top of this post, for those who didn’t follow the show through its five tumultuous seasons, is the rolling meth lab where Walter White and Jesse Pinkman began their career as meth cooks.

As he tried to find the right combination of allergy pills that would hold me for a couple weeks, and that the feds would let me walk out of the store with, the pharmacist began a diatribe about the feds and their complex and absolutely inflexible rules about how much allergy medicine you can buy at one time.

“There’s an opioid crisis in America”, he said as we both filled out all the paperwork that goes with the transaction, “and it’s because the feds made meth so expensive on the street that junkies turned to heroin – not that the feds would ever admit it”. “Amen, brother”, I said.

“And now Sessions wants to lock up even more people for smoking a joint”, he continued. We talked about the futility of the war on drugs and the misguided thinking that’s behind it, from people like Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and his ilk. And we talked about the for-profit prison industry, which is another huge factor in the war on drugs.

At long last, the paperwork was completed, and I slid my debit card through the sensor. “All this rigmarole for a transaction that you might make- what, a buck – on?”, I said. “Get rich or die tryin’”, the pharmacist said, with a wry smile. I thanked him and left the store, taking my generic contraband with me.

The irony of this whole thing is that my allergies are wicked from April to October, and my primary care doc has written a prescription for me, for Claritin-D. I get it at Walgreens, with all the rest of the meds that keep me alive. But yesterday, when I went to take a Claritin-D pill in the morning, I discovered that I had stupidly let my supply run out. And my eyes were killin’ me. And my nose was flowing like Niagara Falls.

And when I called Walgreens to get my prescription refilled, the nice lady told me that my prescription had expired, and that they’d have to call my doc to get a renewal before they could refill it. Usually that takes a total of three or four days, and I needed relief NOW. Which is how I wound up in the west side strip mall pharmacy yesterday.

Oh, and by the way – when I stop in at Walgreens later this week to pick up my Claritin-D 24-hour prescription, I’ll get a 90-day supply. I’ll drive off with enough pseudoephedrine for Walt and Jesse to cook up a nice big batch of meth. No signature, no driver's license, no federal paperwork. Just the co-pay and I'm on my way. Ridiculous.