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??”
“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!!
Pharmacy is under a lot of the same pressure as the rest of the medical profession, which is to say that they’re understaffed, underpaid, overworked, and burnt out. It doesn’t surprise me that they’re starting to fail to meet basic standards. That’s not to say it’s acceptable that you can’t get your medication, just that you’re probably not the only one, and it’s likely not limited to that pharmacy.
Pharmacy is incredibly grim, these poor workers spent years and thousands of dollars to study to work in corpo retail for low pay
A friend of mine worked at CVS briefly and had some horror stories. Being encouraged to illegally put people on automatic refills without their consent was his biggest problem with the job. Weird quotas for dubious practices, constant intentional staffing shortages, making it so the most trained pharmacologists had to spend their time answering the phone instead of doing pharmacological things, etc. They even delayed his onboarding and first paycheck by two months because his state had a single HR person in charge of staffing, and they’d been on vacation. This article contains a bunch of his other grievances:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/health/pharmacists-medication-errors.html
Edit - spelling
In retrospect now after reading the article I feel like an asshole because it clearly my problem stems from an underlying issue driven by the ceaseless churn towards profit by businesses/corporations but damn I wish they’d illegally sign me up for automatic refills of my vyvanse cause that’d make my life 100% easier
Jesus the revolution should happen today JUST to stop whatever is going on at the CVS pharmacy.
The only pharmacist I know spent college self medicating with cocaine and research chemicals from the internet.
In his defense, he was always willing to share.
Tell me if this is a scorching hot take
But I’m starting to believe that some of the super rich kids in med, pharmacy, veterinary, dentistry and orthodontics programs made it through said program because they were rich or were charismatic
Hopefully just outliers, but I’ve had two known instances of people who were dentists that definitely shouldn’t have passed dental school.
But even so, shouldn’t even be possible for schooling like that allow people to slip through the cracks
Cold take. The modern professional only got there with family resources or some other form of privilege for the most part.
It’s a bit more complex than that. It’s more if you are rich and you can’t pass, they will drill you until you can. By force-feeding information to the failsons and handwalking them through the tests regardless of the required resources.
That’s why dropout rates at Oxbridge et al are relatively low compared to “new money” top-tier universities. They will get Mr Habsburg Chin through enough exams to scrape a third if it kills every teacher in the College.
Try not giving Walgreen’s any business if there are any locally owned pharmacies in your area.
any locally owned pharmacies in your area
there is & I would normally but the locally owned one nearby has an owner who is a POS and hires pharmacy techs who’ll do things like steal thousands of dollars from their girlfriend or (different tech but still) loudly ask you how you’re enjoying the trazodone and if I think its helping with my depression, which no it isn’t when you’re announcing to the entire line of strangers/small town acquaintances behind me that there’s a depressed ADHD twink at the counter; so all in all despite its shittiness Walgreens is the superior choice.
Lmao its almost like everyone that owns a business is a piece of shit.
Still better than waiting an hour for your scrip at walgreens + you can threaten a hipaa suit if they don’t shutup
Unfortunately, HIPAA doesnt have a private right of action. All you can do is file a complaint with DHS.
What the fuck
Sir this is an opioid mill
None taken.
Sorry you had to deal with this, and that your local indie shop is fucked too. Don’t know if it would help at all but next time consider asking if your provider would notate on the prescription “BRAND NAME MEDICALLY NECESSARY,” or since this is likely an electronic Rx, check the field for NO SUBSTITUTIONS to hedge against Walgreen’s system autosubbing for the generic. Depending on your state law (assuming you’re in US) there may be a different phrase or method for forcing the pharmacy to fill brand name.
Second, I didn’t come here to defend these guys or tell you not to trust your lying eyes. I’m just gonna paste what I wrote in the White House Pharmacy thread the other day. this was in response to someone asking how retail pharmacists aren’t just glorified pez dispensers:
more serious note though, the extent to which people unironically say this about pharmacy is a key example of how for-profit healthcare and capitalism in general has corrupted the profession IMO. medicine, just like all health care should be free for all and healthcare workers should treat people with dignity and respect and should themselves be able to work their profession with dignity… if it looks like the pharmacist is a useless gatekeeper just counting pills all day that’s because that’s the extent to which the profession has been degraded. there’s still important work being done behind the scenes but the amount of corporate BS far outweighs it. trust me most of them hate it too, even if they lack the awareness to see where the problem truly is. there are some scumbags but most of them know they should be making sure that people get the medicine they need safely, and not answering to CVS or Walgreens’ bottom lines.
Thank you for your service, don’t mind my pre-lunch rage. I do know in my heart that most pharmacists worldwide are doing a underappreciated service and often going far for their customers, so I am sorry for disparaging the profession when I’m really mad at what capitalism has wrought.Lol you’re all good, there was a time in my life when I used to get pissy when people would say that, and I’d go WELL AKCHUALLY and proceed to tell them at great length how they just don’t get it… super cringe shit tbh.
Corporate retail pharmacy is a fucking dumpster fire for all parties involved… patients are #1 but it sucks shit for providers and pharmacy staff too. Everyone except the C-suites and shareholders. No harm in pointing it out.
As a severely ADHD person in this thread trying to balance “These are also exploited laborers” good takes while not flying off the rails at the “Well ackshually cops need more money if you don’t want them shooting innocent’s sweaty” takes, thank you for knowing this and saying this and I love you and I hope we can destroy for-profit medicine real fucking soon.
hell yes, love you too and I long for the day when this evil system is just a terrible memory
ooo look at me i know how to make little potions im soooooooo fucking smart pay me $100k/year
if these alchemists are so great why don’t they turn lead to gold and retire? stop burdening us with tiresome elixirs
I’m not sure if pharmacists are capable chemists
Working as a pharmacist used to (in the past ~30 years) include making and mixing a lot of medications manually. Now it’s mostly just dealing with sealed containers. But I’d be surprised if some decent chemistry experience wasn’t still required during study.
They still know their chemistry most the time, don’t usually have much hands on experiences after graduating unless they go into compounding pharmacies
I don’t think intelligence comes into it very much. From what I’ve seen, the norm is, especially in metropolitan areas, pharmacists are overworked, underpaid, understaffed, don’t get enough sleep, are constantly treated like shit by customers (who, to be fair sometimes have a valid reason to be upset, since it’s medicine and not just some random treats).
I agree with this, but as someone with ADHD who needs it to perform my fucking job, I am also all of these things except also untreated for ADHD because someone else also isn’t doing their job to even basic competency. Like I know there’s a million zillion reasons it sucks but those are never the reasons we’re given. The reasons we’re given day in day out are “well, we fucked up and here’s an excuse that doesn’t even make sense.”
If we push back on those reasons AT ALL we’re instantly treated like medication seeking strung out addicts who are angry because they can’t get their street drugs that they probably give away for free to babies to get them hooked and dependent on drugs while putting razor blades in their candy or whatever the the fucking news fed WASP stereotype is.
It’s not about being annoyed that sometimes mistakes happen and people are generally treated like shit as laborers, including pharmacists. I’ve never met an ADHD person who doesn’t understand that the systems are shit, the regulations are shit, the wages and staffing is shit, etc. What we don’t understand and what’s so frustrating is why the fuck they simultaneously think the words they’re saying are even consistent (if not valid) excuses, and why the fuck we’re treated like shit (which again, even if we were addicts is a piss poor way to treat people, but that’s a separate argument). It’s not a single event. It’s every single pharmacy, every single pharmacist, every single prescription, with VERY RARE exceptions.
Being someone that’s also got friends and family taking BPD meds, anti-depressants, etc, even they think it’s absurd how hard it is to fill an ADHD prescription compared to literally everything they take. The entire medical attitude towards ADHD is fucking toxic.
Edit: Just to add because I think it’s important, I know literally none of this is their fault and is entirely the result of shit policies, shit circumstances, and shitloads of propaganda. I know they’re mostly now just retail employees, none of the above is ever any reason to treat them like shit either. I was just defending OPs rant that I am overwhelmingly sure they came here to have instead of being annoyed at the pharmacist, because if they had it at the pharmacy they’d have included “and now my life is basically a million times harder because they decided the minute I was agitated that I was never allowed to take a controlled substance again.”
preach it
They do tend to be overly dense, like they’re doing it on purpose, always chalked it down to corporate training
Maybe its all the fluorescent lighting.
Last week I needed a script for a minor and now fixed issue. Call the pharmacist. It’s in. Drive down.
Can I have it?
Sorry, we don’t have it.
You said that you had it, yesterday.
The pharmacist telephone wasn’t working yesterday, so you couldn’t possibly have spoken to us.
I remember calling and I wouldn’t have come unless you said it was in. Can you please double check.
… …
Okay, I’ve looked and we don’t have it. And you couldn’t have spoken to us because the phone wasn’t working.
Okay, but I definitely called and the log on my phone says that I called you and connected. But that’s it? You can’t help?
You’ll have to try again tomorrow.
Drive home. Make a coffee. Ring ring.
Hello it’s the pharmacy, we found your prescription.
Are you taking the piss?
Okay I didn’t say that last part. And all names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved. But jfc the incompetence and the rudeness.
I’m sure theres a lot of technical medical stuff you get to learn as a pharmacist(unless the US just has that as a complete non-licensed position or some wack shit) but it feels like for the user-end there ought to be a pretty big focus on just basic administrative competence and efficiency.
All pharmacies Ive dealt with are total shit shows on the admin side. They give off “bad workplace” vibes like a bar thats had an “always hiring” sign taped in the window for 10 years.
But then on the other hand a lot of them also sell fake ass scam treatments like homeopathy. If anyone, youd expect someone trained in pharmacology would know better.
So what is their role or training exactly?
I think they are security guards for chemicals.
unless the US just has that as a complete non-licensed position or some wack shit
This is called a Pharmacy Technician, and it will be like 80% of the staff in the pharmacy. From my experience, you’ll have one maybe two licensed pharmacists on duty (depending on how large/busy the location is,) and everyone else will be pharmacy technicians. There is a certification process for it, but it does not require any sort of formal pharmacology or medical training and is mostly treated as a retail position as opposed to a medical one.
Good god thats horrifying, although slightly less so than when I got shown a news piece about how Sterile Processing Technicians in at least some places in the US are treated as literally just the equivalent of dishwashers, so they pick people off the street to get bare minimum training in rendering surgical equipment safe.
Yes, speaking for myself I was hired to be a retail pharmacy technician from within the store, where I had originally been hired to sell cigarettes. I went ahead and did the optional certification process out of some misguided desire for legitimacy, but many forgo this because you have to pay certification fees and such.
At this point I have not worked there in almost 10 years, thank goodness, so some things may have changed but I suspect not much.
Around me there seems to be a criminal shortage of pharmacists and pharmacist techs. They all look absolutely dead inside and the signs “now hiring pharmacy tech” has been up for months.
I switch between pharmacies to get my meds and both have stopped calling. My wife needed a prescription and they had it on stock, told her “it will take several hours to fill this” and made her wait a day for no reason.
there should just be big colorful bins of generic pharmaceuticals.
take what you need.
Maybe one of those unattended honor system sheets for inventory purposes
dealing with vyvanse (and adderall and other such listed meds) is a fucking nightmare. they stick you on this stuff to help you deal with ADHD and design the entire process to specifically fuck over anyone with ADHD (and everyone else too)
death to the so-called healthcare system of amerikkka
Yea, pharmacist love to be cops about vyvanse. I hate it
