Are we becoming.......

Considering the police don’t bother with the dealers on my high street there isn’t a snowball in hell chance of them raiding my home for my illicit Tramadol.

Our SIL travels to America frequently, he goes with a pharmacy shopping list!
There are some great OTC drugs not available here.
During COVID he was in Mexico, he bought a huge selection of antibiotics.
So within the family we do a lot of “dealing”.

It is illegal
www.gov.uk/penalties-drug-possession-dealing

Heavens! Don't be swapping antibiotics! Use of these needs a proper diagnosis as there are different kinds for different ailments. And the more they are used the more antibiotic resistance increases - there will come a point when they cease to work if they are used indiscriminately.

No antibiotics just painkillers

Old frill.. oh my word will let them know!!!

Crikey Sago, your SIL needs to check if these medicines can legally be brought into the country in this way - and for heaven’s sake don’t take drugs which are not prescribed for you or bought OTC here. It’s no different to buying medication online and gambling with what you will get and how it will affect you.

A few years ago when I worked on the buses, I had one hell of a migraine for an entire week, couldn't shift it with Migraleve or any of the over the counter pills and potions.

One night I'd clocked the bus back to the garage at 11:50pm and was literally in tears and shaking badly and was violently sick. One of the drivers gave me a couple of ''white pills'' that he said he takes for his migraines. I took them there and then and within less than an hour my migraine had completely gone! He never did tell me what they were and I never asked but I'll be forever grateful to him!

That's the first and last time I've ever taken tablets when I don't know what they are/are for but they worked brilliantly!

I worked with a chap who had a heart condition. He was chatting to a friend who had a different condition and this friend offered him one of his pills to see how he got on with some different medication. He ended up in hospital .

When DH died I took a carrier bag of drugs back to the pharmacy but kept a couple that were also being prescribed for DS. My father in law was awful for sharing drugs round, "Here, try these, they're really good and I get them free on prescription" We were never tempted to take up his offers but it did annoy me that he was misusing his NHS prescriptions like this. Not that he would have understood what I meant if I'd said anything.

I must be so naive.

Until reading this, it would never have occurred to me to offer other people my prescribed medication, and I would not dream of using anyone else’s.

No wonder the NHS is in a state. If we all had to pay for our medication, it wouldn’t be swapped around like this, but because it’s ‘free’, well that’s ok then!

So much waste.

you, unqualified, give someone a prescribed medication. That person becomes very ill, possibly life-changing, or dead. Post mortem will reveal the medication, followed by a police investigation. Manslaughter charge

A person becoming ill with life changing condition after illegal medications, would understandably sue.

Always but always return unused medications to a pharmacy

Overuse and over prescription of antibiotics is responsible for their reduced efficacy as the “bugs” develop resistance. Doctors and even vets no longer reach for the prescription pad to dish out antibiotics for the slightest infection.
Sepsis is a killer and I have seen the results when antibiotics can no longer cope.
It is also important to take into account that different infections respond to different antibiotics so their indiscriminate use as suggested up thread by Sago is not only unwise and illegal but may also play a part in the decreasing efficacy of antibiotics in general.

I know someone who had tramadol in hospital. His bp became so low that he almost died and had to be resuscitated, just one tramadol pill to someone who was, unknowingly, susceptible

Unless you know what the pain is caused by it is not a good idea to mask it, pain is a symptom.

I know of somebody that took another’s pain killers , which worked, she continued to take them for several months before dying of an undiagnosed cancer which would have been investigated if she had gone to a doctor with the initial pain.

sago, that one day in the future, when you pr a family member, needs a very specific antibiotic for a disease that will kill. It won`t work because you have made yourself and your family antibiotic resistant and you will likely died from your current and past actions

You have probably seen news reports of the death of Matthew Perry (he played Chandler Bing in the sitcom Friends) He was discovered unresponsive in his hot-tub, and was found to be dead on arrival at hospital. The cause of death was not obvious at first, so Twitter was alive with rumours, including some very nasty posts saying that he, and all the Friends cast, had "sold their souls to the devil" and were drug addicts, so it served him right.

After more tests, it was announced that he had drowned, as a result of the effects of the ketamine medication he was taking instead of the drugs he was trying to escape.
www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/12/16/ketamine-deaths-like-matthew-perrys-are-rare-but-not-unheard-of-heres-what-to-know/

Apparently he was prescribed strong medication years earlier for the extreme pain he suffered after an accident. The medication dosage didn't get rid of the pain, so he sought more of it on the street and became addicted. Since then he had fought the addiction, and helped many people in the same position.

If someone offers you "their pills" to deal with your medical problem, they could be a perfectly legitimate medical drug that is Ok for THEM to take under supervision, but not OK for YOU to take for a different condition with no medical advice. You can become addicted without ever knowing that you are taking a banned substance Ask them what is in the pills, and look them up online before taking them- you will find out the ingredients and the possible side effects.

Sago "There are some great OTC drugs not available here." Why, do you imagine, are they unavailable here? I you think of at least one good reason, such as that they have serious side effects like addiction."

Good grief, just why do you think pharmacists do 5 years training? Apart from the antibiotic resistance argument, what about contraindications? Very foolish, and as Karmalady wisely said, the implications if a person becomes ill through your 'prescription' need to be considered.

Antibiotic resistance is not really just a personal thing to the person who takes antibiotics without good reason and medical knowledge. The bacteria of the infections that the AB is targetting are not ALL killed in one dose of it. Some individual bacteria cells are tougher than their colleagues and are still around after one or two doses, and need zapping again, and some even survive several hits before they succumb. That is why you are always told to finish the course, and not to stop taking the AB if you start to feel better.

If you don't kill off ALL the infective bacteria cells, the ones that are left are the stronger ones, and they are still able to infect other people - plus, they may have developed their own defences against that antibiotic.

Keep repeating this with people buying just enough antibiotic over the counter to make them feel that they have beaten the infection but in fact only getting rid of the weaker bacteria cells, and you end up with stronger disease infections with AB resistance getting more numerous. Then doctors have to prescribe different antibiotics to counter infections which previously could have been defeated. Some bacteria strains are now resistant to almost all antibiotics.

You have put it much more fully and clearly than I was able to Elegran.

Thanks Elegran. It needed to be said. I have never heard of people here buying antibiotics like that but probably it does happen. They tend to check the mail a lot here and I think if you were importing prescription only drugs you would get caught. Most parcels I get from overseas have been opened and re packed at customs.

Keep repeating this with people buying just enough antibiotic over the counter

Can one buy antibiotics over the counter in the UK?

Or in other European countries, for that matter?

Oh my word sago your post absolutely horrified me, to buy drugs in Mexico or America to ‘deal’ in the family is awful don’t you see how bad it is I would never give anyone an antibiotic or take one from anyone else the over use of antibiotics is leading to resistant strains of infections don’t you understand that ….you sound so matter of fact about it
I can’t believe what I’m reading