vyvanse prescription has been delayed for 3 weeks now. i am a patient, yet severely ADHD soul, so I figure “oh it’s probably just delayed because they’re out of stock” and go about my business since I had about a week left (thanks to me completely forgetting to take it like 30% of the time).

wake up this morning and realize I am taking the last one I have. Not good, I think, because next week is especially busy at work. So I take an early lunch break at 9:30 and drive out to Walgreens to see if maybe, somehow, I’ve just completely missed the “your prescription’s ready” call and texts.

Pharmacist asks me what I’m looking for. “My vyvanse prescription, it was placed on the 24th. My name is ABC and DOB is…”

Tappity-tap-tap on their computer. They glance up and narrow their eyes at me like I’m asking them to hack into the NSA’s secure amphetamine database. Tappity-tap-tap.

“You’re picking up a vyvanse prescription?? For whom??”

Uh, myself…? Here’s my license.

“Hm…I’m not finding it, let me ask the head pharmacist to take a look.”

30 minutes go by. The Head Pharmacist finally comes out and asks for my license for the second time. “The other pharmacist literally copied it down on the clipboard before they went to find you.” I say as I fish it out of my wallet. They blink and look at the clipboard.

“Oh…huh. You’re right they did.”

Now I’m somewhat irritated as I hand them my license again. He looks at it, realizes it is exactly the same as what the sheet says, and hands it back to me.

“So umm…it looks like the generic lisdexamfetamine is backordered which is why we haven’t filled it yet.”

This wouldn’t be a shock except for the fact that I don’t get the fucking generic. So immediately my response is “Well, my insurance covers the brandname 100% and I don’t even get the generic so…are you saying the brand-name is also backordered and you cannot fill it??”

shocked-pikachu “No, we can fill it if you want the brand name medication!!”

“So why did y’all not fill it for 3 weeks if literally every other time I’ve filled this prescription through you, I’ve received the brand name medication??”

“…Because the generic is back-ordered sir…”

??? What the fuck are you talking about. It sounds like you just tossed my prescription into the “backordered” pile whenever it came in and didn’t realize it wasn’t actually a backordered medication until I came in. Thank you for wasting my entire hour lunch-break!!

    • Selkie210@lemmygrad.ml
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      9 months ago

      Techs have a real high turnover cause the pay is bad, hours are bad, and dealing with people who might be having one of the worst days of their life is hard

      Pharmacist are real understaffed, cause it pays bad for how much education you need, so they usually work the full days by themselves

      • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        There’s also the general fact that, well, for a science job you’re usually doing precious little science (or even pharmacology, since you have no say in dosage and often none in delivery) and are a glorified cashier if you don’t have your own practice. Ideally Pharmacists would work closely with doctors to make sure a patient gets individualised versions of the right drug in the right form as quickly and easily a possible.

        • Selkie210@lemmygrad.ml
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          9 months ago

          Thatd be a big improvement, especially since a lot of people have delays because primary providers don’t need to know drugs well

          • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            Yeah, wouldn’t it be great if you could get a script for your MD, your pharmacist could look at it and your records, go “fuck no, that’ll fuck up your kidneys, lets try this” and call your doctor to alter the script on the spot.

    • nabana [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      This is true of every profession, except some of them also ruin people’s fucking lives and it isn’t an excuse.

      “Cops need to be paid more if you don’t want them shooting innocent people.” ass take.

      • sovietknuckles [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Cops are paid to be class traitors, and no increases in salary or training will change that. Pharmacy techs are not.

        Corporations take advantage of pharmacy techs putting their desire to not ruin peoples’ lives above the fact that they’re not being paid enough to care, that is not a struggle that they share with pigs.

        • nabana [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          While policing definitely selects for already shit people, if you want to argue the case that cops at no point ever had any ideas about helping people only to be harassed by their peers and bosses, have their spirits crushed and be propagandized into conforming with the structural racist and class wafare mission of “policing” in the United States, go right ahead… or you can realize that that’s the EXACT same situation pharmacists are in. They’re literally trained to uphold the exact same racist and class based order, and police people away from assistance (medicatIon, in this case) that cops do with access to so many other rights.

          I’m sure plenty of pharmacists do want to help people, and I’m plenty aware that the the structure that controls them keeps them on an extremely tight leash about who that help can go to. Just like cops. The reason people say ACAB and “good cops quit” is precisely because they know there’s occasionally good people who wind up in the line of work who immediately realize how fucked it is and try and fix it only to get their lives ruined or wind up dead themselves, or be forced to quit.

          None of this is even to defend cops, it’s to illustrate that every single argument you’ve made for pharmacists is true of cops too, as well as almost every single other profession, and that when the pharmacist accusing you of selling drugs because you’re an adult with ADHD, or asking “why you need so many” or “this is an odd dose” or all the other shit they literally should take up with a doctor but won’t because they’ll get sat the fuck down immediately, so they instead harass the patient, that they’re not doing it because “they want to help people but their hands are tied.” Maybe that was true at one point, but at that current point they’re a fucking cop and fucking people over just because they can. When they “accidentally forget to order your prescription” that you’ve been getting the same dose of every month on the same date at the same place for 3+ years, month after month after month, they’re not “trying their best, but just underpaid”.

          They’re not special, they’re not exceptions, they’re not unique. They’re in the exact same situation everyone else is, and it’s perfectly fine to call them pieces of shit for acting like it.

          Please just re-analyze a bit and think about it.

          (P.S. I’m not saying when the companies who own these pharmacies etc push these policies they’re always doing them out of an out and out conscious racist or class based purpose, but cops don’t think they are either. It’s all culture and “business policies” made by extremely normal ceo failsons and board members, handed down to be enforced by the poor against the poor, sanitized through industry appropriate language and coding. It just so happens that in policework being outwardly mask off racist is industry appropriate, because the “white” public literally supports it most of the time.)