It's a big pain. The prescription line at my pharmacy is never shorter than 15 minutes. Thus the drug is $11/month but costs me $60 in time to wait in that line. Meanwhile, other drugs are just mailed to me, including my prescriptions.

The prescription line is always fun. I remember some dude coughing on everyone, picking up his cell phone, "oh it was positive? great, I'm in line to get the medication" referring to COVID. In my opinion, the easiest place to get sick is waiting in the prescription line. Yet another tax on congestion sufferers.

Having said all that, your doctor can write you a prescription and all the restrictions go away, including the ID check. It has always delayed my fills even further so we don't bother anymore.

The most positive outcome from buying pseudoephedrine in line was being told "hey, your ID expires tomorrow" which was a good catch. I wasn't paying any attention to that. (I don't drive, so it's just a piece of plastic with my name. But necessary for paying taxes online in NYS.)

It means you have to go to the pharmacy when it's open. That's a significant hurdle if you're sick, especially if you have something contagious and you're trying not to expose people to it, or if you work weird hours, or if you don't have reliable transportation, or if you're the primary caregiver for young children, etc....

It also means you can't get it delivered, can't stock up, might have trouble sending someone else to get it, etc.... It's a big pain for some people, and particularly for people who already have a harder life than average.

I suffer from seasonal allergies that last anywhere from 2-4 months out of the year. During the height of allergy season, I take Claritin-D – a mixture of loratadine and pseudoephedrine.

Claritin-D 24-hour caplets come in boxes of 10. You need 3 boxes to get a full month's supply. Each caplet has 240mg of pseudoephedrine – 2.4g per box.

In my state, individuals can purchase up to 9g of pseduoephedrine per month, but only up to 3.6g per day.

So, while I can technically purchase a full month's supply of Claritin-D, I can't buy more than one box at a time.

These sorts of rules are minor inconveniences for an individual compared to the rest of life's challenges, but they exist in a special category of stupid that make them all the more frustrating.

But, here's a thought: what if I had children who needed the same medication? Who's going without?

GP said:

> Some people stopped buying pseudoephedrine entirely, either because they were offended by these rules or because they were afraid that they could wrongly be implicated in meth investigations if they appeared to buy it too often.

This has actually happened [0], and I seem to remember more instances (at least when the law was first passed). I know I have also gone to buy it in a headache-induced fog and found that I've forgotten my ID, and on at least one occasion the national drug whatever system was down and they refused to sell it. Because it has to be run through the specific national database, it has to be run through one department and I have been unable to purchase because that department has closed for the day.

These are just what comes to mind when I think about purchasing pseudoephedrine over the years; it's just generally become a pain to get. It makes me wonder if it'd be quicker and easier to just buy meth and reintroduce the hydroxyl group to get my cold medicine.

[0] https://reason.com/2009/09/28/hoosier-grandmother-arrested-f...

I did not know that pseudeophendrine could be bought without a prescription until last year I think. I was deterred from buying it not because I fear putting my name down, but because I wrongly assumed I needed a prescription and thus a doctors visit to go purchase it.

There aren't exactly signs that say "Hey, the good stuff is behind the counter and you don't need a prescription to get it".

Depends on the state; at least some have made it prescription-only.

It's much less convenient than going to the nearest 24-hour store and grabbing it off the shelf. And I'm a doctor married to a doctor; I don't have to get an appointment to get a prescription for a non-scheduled drug, but I do have to go during pharmacy hours and wait to pick it up.

The downstream effects in other countries are pretty annoying.

Because of US restrictions on pseudo, bizarrely other countries have followed suit - it’s next to impossible to find a decongestant with pseudo here in Ireland, they will sell you the useless phenylephrine shit instead, and the packaging is almost indistinguishable unless you spend a while looking and arguing with a pharmacist who is convinced phenylephrine works just as good.

It's a huge pain if the pharmacy is closed or has a long line. A pointless, purposeless pain. Another sacrifice the the always-ineffective yet never underfunded drug war gods.

You can't get it delivered using standard delivery apps (you can get phenylephrine, or medications containing it such as DayQuil, delivered using uber eats or doordash). That is an issue when you're sick.

I was refused purchase because I had an out of state driver's license. Despite very visibly and audibly suffering from severe nasal congestion.

It's still a pain in the ass you can't just go to the gas station and get some, etc... There shouldn't be a need to go to a pharmacy for what should be an over the counter drug that's far more effective than synephrine ever was. The difference between the 2 is night and day, probably because one actually works and the other maybe kinda sorta barely does.

You can can do this or your doctor can write you a prescription. I've never stopped using pseudoephedrine and depending on how congested I am sometimes it's the little red 4 hour pills or sometimes it's the big monster 12 hour version - but your doctor can write a generic prescription for pseudoephedrine and the quantity and amount and you can buy a box that way via cash or insurance too.

According to my friend who suffers when there is pollen/smoke in the air, it is typically sold out when he needs it, because other people breathe the same contaminated air.

So he has to drive around to ~5 pharmacies to occasionally score a a box.

He does try to stock up during low season, but it's hard to do.

Some years ago I was very frustrated, as a UK citizen visiting the States and suffering from congestion, that I was completely unable to buy it because I wasn't carrying suitable ID that the pharmacy would recognize.

have to produce a government id also