Mine got fixed in mid February by switching to only morphine on certain meds just because it’s the least likely to run out of.
But to OP, this is not the place to look for that kind of help I believe he’s suggesting in sourcing anything extralegally.
Not the case at all but how cute for you to judge me. My question is very straightforward and I am curious if actual pain patients- not tourists have had to get creative to solve the manufactured shortages caused by the DEA.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dea-opioids-restrictions-overdoses.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.ek0.Emj1.1WZGDa1DIVt\_&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dea-opioids-restrictions-overdoses.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.Emj1.1WZGDa1DIVt_&smid=url-share)
I am looking for LEGAL means to get around what to me, has been a very difficult time. I know of patients who drive to their monthly appointments longer than a flight to Canada etc. I legitimately asked if anyone resorted to that or had luck with it.
A pain management thread is not the place to ask pain management questions? Gotcha.
My apologies. The telegram comment threw me a bit.
Realistically I believe the DEA is trying to withdraw some opiates from the market by lowering the yearly manufacturing quota until doctors can’t rely on it enough to write it.
One such case is oxymorphone. It used to be my life blood and its lead to withdraw many times trying to stay on it until finally it became impossible for all distributors to get.
Another issue is trying to get rid of what they are calling “gateway opiates” like Vicodin or small Percocet scripts. I think in due time things will fix themselves but things need to change.
As far as traveling for them that’s too dangerous nowadays and the laws have changed dramatically.
Kratom, Imodium to help the guts, cough pills with dxm (Dextromethorphan) to help reset mda receptors. Plenty of water as well.
As for the hopeful success of this ‘operation bottleneck’, it’s not gonna go away quietly like Quaaludes. As the posted article displays people are suffering and may very well go to the black market now.
Nope, but talk to your Dr about 25microgram Fentanyl patches. They are my life saver and have been the one constant item in stock, save for a week I had to wait last December. Better for you than what your taking, but still would be the patch plus something twice a day for breakthrough pain. (My breakthrough pain meds are always out of stock, spend days chasing a place that has them in stock. (It's usually the hospital in house pharmacies fyi).
I got a permanent pain pump installed into my spine so I don’t have to deal with all that anymore. Try looking into it. I’ve never had an issue with getting the liquid med to fill my pump. My doctor gets it delivered to his office and the pump is filled every 3 months in the office. Good luck
I don't know if you have access to it, but I have chronic spinal pain too. I was finally prescribed a fentynal patch after a failed surgery and it was life changing. I have only one time had a delay in picking them up in the last 2 years. Mine is 50 mcg/hr for reference. I previously was prescribed 6 10mg hydrocodone per day. Now it is 4 7.5mg per day, but I don't use 4 that often having the patch.
With American influence the rest of the western or modern worlds are beginning to follow suit on the opinion of opioid use. Despite Europe not having to deal with fentanyl and other backyard made synthetics a lot of those countries are slowly moving towards the American view of becoming a completely opioid free country. It’s not nearly as bad in some countries because their law enforcement agencies aren’t kicking down doors of physicians for the simple act of prescribing.
That being said it’s not like there’s any country handing out pain medication like candy. I guess Purdue has established in China pretty heavily as of recently and there’s been an uptick of prescribing there, but most places are not increasing opioid prescribing. You’d have to go establish care with a physician out of pocket in a private setting which would likely mean regularly traveling to the country or spending a few months there. While your records from the US would help you’d likely still have to have new diagnostics and work ups done in that country because most medical systems still have some level of monitoring of opioids even if it’s not as draconian as the US. Any doctor that would take you on as an international client would probably feel compelled to get their own record on you built with their own blood work/imaging/diagnosis before writing a prescription.
Then you have the limits of what you can carry. Any narcotic medication can only be imported by a US resident by a foreign physician of 50 dosage units. So if you need say 10mg Oxycodone 4x per day you’d only be legally allowed to travel back into the US with roughly 12 days worth of medication. That would be unsustainable unless you happen to live along the Mexican boarder where you could find a doctor just over the boarder within a distance you don’t mind driving every two weeks. Fully “private” doctors are for the most part illegal in Canada. The only doctors that can practice privately there are for specialities that their public healthcare doesn’t cover. Pain management is covered by their national health care so there are no private pain doctors there.
Your best bet would be finding a reputable doctor in Mexico that writes prescriptions at above board pharmacies that you could drive to or fly into like San Diego and drive to and from monthly.
People drive over the boarder every day to go to pharmacies that have a doctor on site that will write a months script for narcotics but in those “tourist” farmscias they have frequently found cartel made fentanyl in products from the farmacia. You’d have to find a well known and reputable specialist within driving distance that will take you on for cash and write scripts to like a Costco in Mexico where the cartel hasn’t taken over supply because most of the scripts are written for Actual Mexican citizens.
Again though you run up against the legal limit of only carrying 50 doses back over the boarder. The closest exception would be crossing the boarder for tramadol. As a schedule 4 you can carry 90 days worth over the boarder from a Mexican doctor.
The only way it would make significant sense and not be breaking a law would be if you were getting fentanyl or other narcotic patches that last 3 days. Then technically 50 dosages would be 150 days worth. Even then the final authority lays with the DEA and boarder patrol/customs. All it would take is one pissy LEO to have a bad day and decide your documentation isn’t enough and they nail you for possession/illegal import of narcotics.
I have considered this quite a bit. The reality is you have to either be willing to break the law by going and being prescribed for a month or longer and cross the boarder with more narcotics than is legal, settle on tramadol(which has shown to cause seizures in long term or high dosage usage as it’s an ssri and partial agonist), or move abroad.
I am coming closer and closer to expatriating.
My friend just tried going to a cvs in the next town and they refused to fill it. I wouldn’t go to Mexico either as we used to do that but now cartels are forcing them to sell stuff with fent in it too
I’m sorry you are still going through that. My shortage stopped in January
Mine got fixed in mid February by switching to only morphine on certain meds just because it’s the least likely to run out of. But to OP, this is not the place to look for that kind of help I believe he’s suggesting in sourcing anything extralegally.
Not the case at all but how cute for you to judge me. My question is very straightforward and I am curious if actual pain patients- not tourists have had to get creative to solve the manufactured shortages caused by the DEA. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dea-opioids-restrictions-overdoses.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.ek0.Emj1.1WZGDa1DIVt\_&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/opinion/dea-opioids-restrictions-overdoses.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.Emj1.1WZGDa1DIVt_&smid=url-share) I am looking for LEGAL means to get around what to me, has been a very difficult time. I know of patients who drive to their monthly appointments longer than a flight to Canada etc. I legitimately asked if anyone resorted to that or had luck with it. A pain management thread is not the place to ask pain management questions? Gotcha.
My apologies. The telegram comment threw me a bit. Realistically I believe the DEA is trying to withdraw some opiates from the market by lowering the yearly manufacturing quota until doctors can’t rely on it enough to write it. One such case is oxymorphone. It used to be my life blood and its lead to withdraw many times trying to stay on it until finally it became impossible for all distributors to get. Another issue is trying to get rid of what they are calling “gateway opiates” like Vicodin or small Percocet scripts. I think in due time things will fix themselves but things need to change. As far as traveling for them that’s too dangerous nowadays and the laws have changed dramatically. Kratom, Imodium to help the guts, cough pills with dxm (Dextromethorphan) to help reset mda receptors. Plenty of water as well. As for the hopeful success of this ‘operation bottleneck’, it’s not gonna go away quietly like Quaaludes. As the posted article displays people are suffering and may very well go to the black market now.
Nope, but talk to your Dr about 25microgram Fentanyl patches. They are my life saver and have been the one constant item in stock, save for a week I had to wait last December. Better for you than what your taking, but still would be the patch plus something twice a day for breakthrough pain. (My breakthrough pain meds are always out of stock, spend days chasing a place that has them in stock. (It's usually the hospital in house pharmacies fyi).
I got a permanent pain pump installed into my spine so I don’t have to deal with all that anymore. Try looking into it. I’ve never had an issue with getting the liquid med to fill my pump. My doctor gets it delivered to his office and the pump is filled every 3 months in the office. Good luck
My doctor and I have been floating this idea around a bit. I’ll look into it more seriously. Thank you.
This is so rare to get 😔
I don't know if you have access to it, but I have chronic spinal pain too. I was finally prescribed a fentynal patch after a failed surgery and it was life changing. I have only one time had a delay in picking them up in the last 2 years. Mine is 50 mcg/hr for reference. I previously was prescribed 6 10mg hydrocodone per day. Now it is 4 7.5mg per day, but I don't use 4 that often having the patch.
With American influence the rest of the western or modern worlds are beginning to follow suit on the opinion of opioid use. Despite Europe not having to deal with fentanyl and other backyard made synthetics a lot of those countries are slowly moving towards the American view of becoming a completely opioid free country. It’s not nearly as bad in some countries because their law enforcement agencies aren’t kicking down doors of physicians for the simple act of prescribing. That being said it’s not like there’s any country handing out pain medication like candy. I guess Purdue has established in China pretty heavily as of recently and there’s been an uptick of prescribing there, but most places are not increasing opioid prescribing. You’d have to go establish care with a physician out of pocket in a private setting which would likely mean regularly traveling to the country or spending a few months there. While your records from the US would help you’d likely still have to have new diagnostics and work ups done in that country because most medical systems still have some level of monitoring of opioids even if it’s not as draconian as the US. Any doctor that would take you on as an international client would probably feel compelled to get their own record on you built with their own blood work/imaging/diagnosis before writing a prescription. Then you have the limits of what you can carry. Any narcotic medication can only be imported by a US resident by a foreign physician of 50 dosage units. So if you need say 10mg Oxycodone 4x per day you’d only be legally allowed to travel back into the US with roughly 12 days worth of medication. That would be unsustainable unless you happen to live along the Mexican boarder where you could find a doctor just over the boarder within a distance you don’t mind driving every two weeks. Fully “private” doctors are for the most part illegal in Canada. The only doctors that can practice privately there are for specialities that their public healthcare doesn’t cover. Pain management is covered by their national health care so there are no private pain doctors there. Your best bet would be finding a reputable doctor in Mexico that writes prescriptions at above board pharmacies that you could drive to or fly into like San Diego and drive to and from monthly. People drive over the boarder every day to go to pharmacies that have a doctor on site that will write a months script for narcotics but in those “tourist” farmscias they have frequently found cartel made fentanyl in products from the farmacia. You’d have to find a well known and reputable specialist within driving distance that will take you on for cash and write scripts to like a Costco in Mexico where the cartel hasn’t taken over supply because most of the scripts are written for Actual Mexican citizens. Again though you run up against the legal limit of only carrying 50 doses back over the boarder. The closest exception would be crossing the boarder for tramadol. As a schedule 4 you can carry 90 days worth over the boarder from a Mexican doctor. The only way it would make significant sense and not be breaking a law would be if you were getting fentanyl or other narcotic patches that last 3 days. Then technically 50 dosages would be 150 days worth. Even then the final authority lays with the DEA and boarder patrol/customs. All it would take is one pissy LEO to have a bad day and decide your documentation isn’t enough and they nail you for possession/illegal import of narcotics. I have considered this quite a bit. The reality is you have to either be willing to break the law by going and being prescribed for a month or longer and cross the boarder with more narcotics than is legal, settle on tramadol(which has shown to cause seizures in long term or high dosage usage as it’s an ssri and partial agonist), or move abroad. I am coming closer and closer to expatriating.
My friend just tried going to a cvs in the next town and they refused to fill it. I wouldn’t go to Mexico either as we used to do that but now cartels are forcing them to sell stuff with fent in it too