Are we becoming.......

Complete disgrace that folk get prescription medicines & don't use them or share them around. Some sell them I imagine.
When I go to see my GP all I want is a diagnosis so I can try something herbal/natural. Unless it seriously needs medication.
The issue with painkillers is that they just mask maybe a serious problem.
And stop massaging the big pharma with money! I can't stand them with a vengeance

I agree with others that there is a reason why some of these painkillers are not available in the UK. Some have side effects that need to be monitored, some people may react badly to them, but more importantly some are actually very addictive. If they've been proven to work without these problems they will usually have been approved here.
I think that another problem with taking drugs that have been prescribed for somebody else is the dosage. My husband and I both take the same statin, but his dosage is four times mine though the pills look virtually identical.

And as for taking antibiotics that have not been prescribed for you, no, you're running the risk of reducing still further the number of antibiotics that will still work for us all.
Also professionals choose the right antibiotic for what is wrong with you, it isn't simply one antibiotic for every ailment.

Theexwife

^Two of our adult children are allergic to penicillin so the antibiotics they can take often don’t work as fast, during Covid it was a great comfort to know we had the drugs on standby.^

Covid is a virus, antibiotics would not be effective anyway.

She wasn’t taking them for Covid, it was just the peace of mind knowing she had them if she needed them because it was very difficult getting GP appointments and prescriptions during lockdown.

Please do not use someone else's antibiotics. Each antibiotic is for a particular illness. i.e. urine infections will be one type of antibiotic and chest infections will be another type of antibiotic and the problem is that when you really need antibiotics for a certain illness, then the prescribed ones by your GP may not work. Also some medications may be out of date.

It is terrible that the state of the NHS has put vulnerable people in this position, it is unforgiveable.

It’s understandable when getting anything from a GP is so difficult. Would I do it? Probably not but I’m not going to blame anyone that does.

I think it is the opposite, if we had to pay for prescriptions people would NOT be giving them to friends etc.

I would never ‘swap’, buy off the internet or get unprescribed drugs from anyone. Doctors and pharmacists train for several years to recognise how different drugs interact or adversely affect other health conditions yet people are happy to pop pills they know nothing about

This reminds me of a platter who was doing a job for our builders while they ere away . He went to the doctor and got a prescription . The instruction from the doctor was to' take them all" The builders came to find the plaster but he was nowhere to be found, They eventually found him in hospital as he had taken all the tablets but all at once.

It’s probably more of us what you could be sharing out might not be suitable for another, a guess with strong painkillers could be quite serious for someone else?? I was always told not to share meds.

I expect we have all seen the doctor look up a drug in a very fat book before prescribing it, to check that there are no contraindications as regards other medicines we take or conditions we have. How can a layperson possibly know that a drug is safe unless prescribed by their doctor or purchased on the advice of a pharmacist?

Today I had to break open my ^Rescue pack^of steroids and antibiotics, which I keep for COPD exacerbations.
Thank goodness I checked a few weeks ago for contraindications with my new heart meds. It would have been dangerous to use the ones I had. The cardiologist hadn't checked my record. I contacted my GP, who agreed hatI needed an alternative.
So today, I took antibotics, which won't harm me.
This is why no-one should be sharing medication. totally irresponsible.

Tanjamaltija

When I taught kindergarten, a child's father died because his neighbour gave him indigestion pills...and it was a heart attack. Self-diagnosis and self-medication is never a hood idea.

That was a tragedy. One of our GPs died as he thought he had indigestion when it was a heart attack. He was a useless GP with serious hypochondria. Whatever his patient had he always had it but worse!

My father had antibiotic resistance back in the 70's when he was only 54. It wasn't directly due to the antibiotic resistance
that he died, but the stress of facing another series of surgeries due to infections that wouldn't clear up probably caused the heart attack that killed him. As a result I'm very aware of the risks of overuse of antibiotics and would never use without a prescription.

I am diabetic so on many different medications. I also have a blood glucose monitor so am prescribed testing strips. When my monitor failed I was given a new one which needed different strips. I found someone who could use my left over strips as she had the same monitor as my old one. By passing them on to her I saved the NHS a few pounds as otherwise they'd have been thrown away. I was recently taken off one of my medications and hope to find someone who is on that to pass them on to. If I return them to the pharmacy they will be thrown away and I know they have been kept properly and are fit to use, but I would never give any prescribed medication to someone who was not being prescribed that medication themselves. Personally I see it as trying to save money for the NHS and save waste, but I know what I'm doing - I studied pharmacology as part of my degree so won't be taking any silly risks!

When I was 10 if I had a bad cold my dad would give me a quater of a codeine just once and send me to school. At senior school it was half a codeine just once. In those days 60s you could buy codeine at the chemist and he always had a bottle of them in his pocket. Never more than once though as he said they were bad for you if you took it more than once.
I've never taken pills that weren't prescribed for me and walked out of a party where purple hearts and other pills were being offered around as a teenager. Sharing tablets can be dodgy as you don't know the strength of the tablets other people have been prescribed.

Please don't. Consider the consequences of taking prescribed medication that's not meant for you. Your GP knows your medical history and prescribes accordingly. They'll know which drugs interact with other medication. You could be on the cusp of taking something that makes you very ill, or worse.

Also consider the consequences if someone makes themselves very ill or even dies as a direct result of taking medication given to them BY YOU.

I can't believe grown adults even contemplate such a thing.

jocork

My father had antibiotic resistance back in the 70's when he was only 54. It wasn't directly due to the antibiotic resistance
that he died, but the stress of facing another series of surgeries due to infections that wouldn't clear up probably caused the heart attack that killed him. As a result I'm very aware of the risks of overuse of antibiotics and would never use without a prescription.

I am diabetic so on many different medications. I also have a blood glucose monitor so am prescribed testing strips. When my monitor failed I was given a new one which needed different strips. I found someone who could use my left over strips as she had the same monitor as my old one. By passing them on to her I saved the NHS a few pounds as otherwise they'd have been thrown away. I was recently taken off one of my medications and hope to find someone who is on that to pass them on to. If I return them to the pharmacy they will be thrown away and I know they have been kept properly and are fit to use, but I would never give any prescribed medication to someone who was not being prescribed that medication themselves. Personally I see it as trying to save money for the NHS and save waste, but I know what I'm doing - I studied pharmacology as part of my degree so won't be taking any silly risks!

As others have said, the current danger with antibiotic resistance is nothing to do with individual people not responding to treatment. It’s that the bacteria strains causing infection are immune to any drugs. This is incredibly serious - imagine you needed surgery, the wound gets infected but you can’t treat the infection. Or you get pneumonia but you can’t treat it. People who think this is in any way “lighthearted” are idiots.

Before I retired I was a pharmacy technician.I had to take a lot of exams and whole modules on how medications can interact with other medications.Even if you think you have the same symptoms some anti inflammatories and pain are dangerous taken with other medicines.
Please don’t share medications.

Regarding returning unwanted prescriptions to pharmacies. Well I really hate doing it but mine are now consigned to my bin, fortunately I don't have many. I luckily have two local pharmacies but I have given up trying to return them. My supermarket pharmacy declines them as 'sorry our basket is full' and our High Street pharmacy will only take them back if they have fulfilled the prescriptions. I have them fulfilled by my supermarket pharmacy so that's a no-go.