from the keep-away-from-prank-loving-children dept.
Walmart offers way to turn leftover opioids into useless gel
Walmart is helping customers get rid of leftover opioids by giving them packets that turn the addictive painkillers into a useless gel. The retail giant announced Wednesday that it will provide the packets free with opioid prescriptions filled at its 4,700 U.S. pharmacies.
The small packets, made by DisposeRX, contain a powder that is poured into prescription bottles. When mixed with warm water, the powder turns the pills into a biodegradable gel that can be thrown in the trash. It works on other prescription drugs and for pills, tablets, capsules, liquids or patches, according to DisposeRx.
[...] Some drugstore chains like CVS and Walgreens also collect unused medications at many of their stores. People can also take leftovers to hospital pharmacies or police stations. Unused prescriptions also can be thrown in the trash. But the Food and Drug Administration recommends mixing them first with something unpalatable like kitty litter or used coffee grounds and sealing the mixture in a plastic bag.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday January 19 2018, @05:58AM (11 children)
Never taken them but my impression is one of these:
A) Use em up and be done with em
B) Don't use em up, but they work really well so save the rest Just In Case
C) You're an addict
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:14AM (5 children)
A town was terrorized last week by the appearance of a monster. Numerous witnesses report going about their day in an ordinary fashion. Their normal days were interrupted when they saw a man beating and raping a woman on the sidewalk. That was perfectly normal, but what happened next was beyond their expectations. "The man on top of the woman began screaming for help," one witness reported. He continued, "He kept shouting 'Monster, monster! Help!' Things like that. It was quite shocking." Eventually, a law enforcement officer saw what was happening and gasped. The officer open fired and shot the woman countless times until motion became silence. "I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a genuine monster! That woman was a tadpole sucker!" the officer said. However, the terror did not end there; the woman's corpse continued polluting everything around it, so the area had to be cluster bombed to get rid of the source of the poison. As for the rapist - who was the largest victim here - mental health experts say that he sustained crippling mental damage from the experience and will likely be the same again. This leaves many wondering: Will men's rights ever be properly respected?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @07:10AM (3 children)
Truly some of the best MRA fiction I have ever read. And that says a lot.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Unixnut on Friday January 19 2018, @09:49AM (2 children)
Indeed, I have to say one thing about the Trolls on SN, they are actually imaginative, and can write properly. Like, the troll equivalent of the intellectual class, or elite. Trollectuals?
"SoylentNews, where even the Trolls are classy"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @07:01PM (1 child)
I know you're being funny, but classy? I haven't seen many posts I would consider high class, quite the opposite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:12PM
And, he seems to have missed the sarcasm. Or perhaps doubled-down: the "best MRA fiction" would be category not unlike "the best shit sandwich". Class just don't enter into it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @05:04PM
Ah, you're a feminist. It makes sense now.
Only in the mind of a feminist can demanding things such as "innocent until proven guilty" and the right of bodily integrity constitute rape.
But that should be the take-away of everybody assigned the male gender at birth. Demanding basic human rights is the equivalent of rape to feminists. Feminism has been doing a lot of work lately to prove that it is a hate movement.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Friday January 19 2018, @06:21AM (3 children)
Definitely B. It shouldn't be necessary, but in a world where the dentist can see you a week from Tuesday and the ER doesn't mind leaving you howling in pain for 8 hours in the waiting area as long as you're at least semi-conscious and not spurting arterial blood, it's good insurance.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:34AM (1 child)
Same here. Dentist. Extractions and root canal.
I have great respect for this chemical. It works great, but at a price.
On me, it messes up the flora and fauna of my GI tract. Things stop working. Constipation. And really foul smelling crap.
So, I took the absolute minimal amount I could. Maybe used half of my allotment.
Kept the rest of em in the back of the cabinet, just in case.
Five years later, I pull something in my back one morning, simply trying to get my underwear on. Really painful, but I could detect no real problem - nothing is grinding or seems broke. Seemed more like a muscle tear than anything else. From misalignment of my foot and the hole it was intended to go into. Couldn't see running up a medical tab so a doctor could tell me what I had already surmised. However, had I thown those pills away, I may have had a forced visit just to get authorization to get some more pills. It took three of 'em to back off the pain to let me do things like get dressed, prepare my food and take a crap. I still have maybe 7 or eight left.
They have been there in the back of the cabinet for at least three more years since that round of lower back pain from that failed underwear incident.
That "feel good, I can now dump my pills" could have cost me a thousand dollars in doctor/hospital fees and possibly weeks of time before I got that little piece of paper that the pharmacist needs to dispense. More likely, it would have caused me to visit a person, known to me to be a user, to go to his source to buy me some pills. And I would have had no idea where they came from.
The money, very likely, would have gone for purchase of guns to protect the dealer from other dealers, or policemen.
If you know you will use them responsibly, I also say "keep them". Its free insurance against something similar to what I experienced. Something really painful can happen at any time, and that is no time to try to "work within the system" to address the problem.
Ideally, I would like to toss them, knowing I could go at any time to a 24-hour pharmacy and get some fresh pills - but things don't work that way. Just because some of us abuse them, and all of us have to endure restrictions to hinder the few that screw everything up for the rest of us.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday January 19 2018, @05:31PM
The sad part is that those who would abuse them still find plenty to abuse and often have an even worse problem with it since they tend to get stuff of random quality and strength. I'm not sure the restrictive laws are actually helping anybody but the DEA.
For example, Fentanyl has become popular since it's easy to move a lot of doses in easily concealed compact form, but it's way too strong to trust some guy in his living room to cut properly. It's only popular because it's easy to hide. Without the crazy drug laws, they'd stick to the much safer heroin. Hardly ideal, but there's be less ODs.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday January 19 2018, @04:24PM
Similar here. Doing a lot of outdoors, including solo. Any injury and one is dead without a serious painkiller.
Almost never use the stuff though.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Friday January 19 2018, @09:26PM
You forgot D) sell them to an addict at an absurd rate
(Score: 5, Insightful) by beckett on Friday January 19 2018, @06:29AM (2 children)
Opioids are detectable in trace amounts in public drinking water supplies [nih.gov]; what does Dispose RX do exactly? The first step in disposal would be to render unusable drugs harmless; however, if it doesn't also render them inert, these flushed/landfilled pharms will continue to hang around and create unintended consequences [discovermagazine.com].
IMO address the root causes [esquire.com] in addition to just managing waste.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday January 19 2018, @07:34AM (1 child)
Exactly what I was thinking, and if "[i]t works on other prescription drugs" -- then it is probably just making the drugs into a gooey mess, not neutralizing them, because neutralizing the medicine would require pretty specific chemical reactions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday January 19 2018, @08:43AM
Not necessarily. A decent oxidising agent will render most of the compounds inactive. Something like sodium percarbonate [wikipedia.org], an adduct of soda and hydrogen peroxide.
I actually wonder if that DisposeRx is not actually carpet cleaner (most of which is sodium percarbonate) sold at a premium price.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:36AM (2 children)
Not to repeat my title bar, but let me repeat my title bar:
"Could it be thrown into the White Trash?"
{keep your government hands off my medicare drug benefits! Teabag Party, circa 2008}
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:41AM (1 child)
Do your own idiotic ramblings actually make sense to you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:43AM
Yes, are you taking opioids? Were they in gel form?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:42AM (2 children)
Blobs of gel? Have you not perused "people at Walmart"? Walmart is turning Americans into obese consumers of cheap Chinese calorific products! It is just like that movie, "Wall-E" But without the Galactic Cruise ship and near zero gravity, but with the really fat Americans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:42AM
I thought that whole store featured in Wall-E was a spoof of the future WalMart.
If you like watching fat-bottomed girls walking around, buns quivering like two hippopotamus in heat, WalMart is a great place to go!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:47AM
Isn't this redundantly pleonastic? Are.there any other kind of Americans?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @09:08AM (1 child)
If word gets out that you have the pills, you may face an armed robbery. A couple guys near me had that; one jumped out the back window to escape and the other got shot dead. Medical and pharmacy workers, especially the low-paid variety, might leak your info. Be wary.
If you do want to get rid of it, head to Ace Hardware and buy the concentrated sulfuric acid. It's sold with the plumbing stuff, for those who are insane enough to unclog drains with it. That'll turn most organic stuff to charcoal. Burning might be simpler, but maybe some would get in the air.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @11:06AM
Or, just take it to the curb in the middle of the night... drop it on the street, scruff a bit with your shoe. Now it looks like dirt.
Walk away. Done.
No one will ever know it was there.
(Score: 4, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @10:16AM (1 child)
So... purely out of curiosity... entirely hypothetical... if I used enough of this stuff could it be used to get rid other unwanted material? Say, for instance, approximately 60kg of meat, bones, hair, teeth and cheap lingerie?
No particular reason, just wondering.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @11:53AM
why would you want to burn your baby teeth with chemical substances?
weirdo...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @01:01PM
that you need to get stoned in any way imaginable?
No amount of stupid gels will help you. Solve the real issues.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday January 19 2018, @01:31PM (7 children)
You can see how people get confused.
If its an antibiotic for a viral infection you're better off throwing it out, but if its a bacterial infection then you have to take every pill ESPECIALLY after you feel better or else you'll get yourself and everyone around you horrifically ill from intentionally breeding antibiotic resistant strains. But if its a painkiller you should stop taking it once you feel good and docs are pretty good at figuring that out most of the time so unclear why you got a 5000 serving bottle of oxies when you actually only took like two, unless someone is getting a big payoff from overprescribing you by a factor of 2500. My guess is doctors get payoffs from drug salespeople for high prescription rates. On the other hand if its an anti-inflammatory or some chronic condition or psych med, when you're feeling good is precisely when you need to continue taking it. And the TV blather people can't decide if vitamins and supplements will save your life or merely make you have expensive pee.
If you're not a half decent biochemist or medical doctor yourself, how about roll a D4 and on 3 or below take the pill and on 4 toss it in the trash. That sounds like an intelligent way to run a medical system, LOL?
I would propose a better strategy is to tell people, if their doctor said to take a pill, to take a frigging pill. And have law enforcement round up and shoot the crooked salespeople/docs who are making ridiculous prescriptions for RICO reasons. This whole gel story seems to be outsourcing a lot of complicated extra work on the general population of sick people because law enforcement and the AMA is too wimpy and lazy to fix their problem.
My guess in the long run is the old business model of send them home with a giant bottle of pills is going obsolete when some kind of all seeing AI algorithm talks to a network connected ATM/pharmacy vending machine and/or drone delivery. So like every five years when I need like one pain pill for my back I ask Alexa nicely (or howl in pain and Alexa "translates") and an amazon drone swoops out of nowhere with precisely one pill and big brother knows and sees everything means drug addiction is technologically obsolete just like semi-public sex when I was young is now obsolete due to cameras everywhere. Or more likely once Alexa figures out someone is a drug addict they get free prescription stuff, with the catch that they're in Big Brother's enforced rehab going forward.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @02:36PM
FTFY
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday January 19 2018, @05:57PM (5 children)
Not really. Pain is hard to predict and often depends on unknowable external factors. That's why so many pain meds say take every x hours as needed. Sometimes you don't need it.
People vary greatly in their tolerance to pain.
External factors include how easy/hard it is to get out of bed and to the bathroom. How bumpy the road is if you have to be driven somewhere, How quickly you heal is a big factor. If you've been told to get out of bed and move about but don't overdo it, your idea of what constitutes overdo will be a factor.
They really don't want to end up underprescribing a pain sensitive patient such that they lay in bed as still as possible (despite instructions to move about) in order to make the pain meds last.
(Score: 2) by beckett on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:52PM (4 children)
and pain meds can increase sensitivity and cause pain to even non-painful stimuli [pnas.org]
From the linked study: "Pain after disease/damage of the nervous system is predominantly treated with opioids, but without exploration of the long-term consequences. We demonstrate that a short course of morphine after nerve injury doubles the duration of neuropathic pain.".
People who self-administer pain medications even for a short term can prolong the feeling of pain possibly for weeks after taking them, which leads to them to self-medicate further. The reliance on pain meds, coupled with elevated tolerance of those meds over time creates a vicious cycle which can exacerbate dependence to the point where it becomes a disorder.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 21 2018, @05:13AM (3 children)
Yes, opoids aren't a panacea. Fortunately, the very same article identifies a new drug that completely reverses the effect of using opoids for pain associated with nerve damage. In the mean while, perhaps gabapentin is a better choice for nerve damage.
But that is really orthogonal to the point of my post.
(Score: 2) by beckett on Sunday January 21 2018, @05:45AM (2 children)
on the contrary, when you're talking about adjusting self-administered pain medication for pain, my post provides the context that the pain response and pain perception is affected by the drugs being self administered. it is an integral concept to pain management.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 21 2018, @05:33PM (1 child)
But I was talking about why DOCTORS sometimes seem to over-PRESCRIBE pain medication. So like I said, your post is really orthogonal to my post.
But to address the point of short term use of left-over medication for acute pain, it does suggest taking an NSAID concurrently if it's not already in the pills.
(Score: 2) by beckett on Monday January 22 2018, @02:25AM
Doctors prescribe pain medication based on patient history and examination. Pain is self reported by the patient. It's absolutely integral to pain management to be aware that the analgesic can sometimes increase the sensation of pain.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Friday January 19 2018, @01:36PM
Also keep in mind the demographics of Walmart.
You give walmart people some random gel, they're gonna shoot it up, use it as hand sanitizer, masturbation or general sex lube, they'll mix it with the medicine before taking the meds, eat it like a gel junk food or weird yogurt, try to use it as optical saline solution, or most likely toss it out unused. I would estimate less than 1% will get used as intended. A classic feel good story that actually does nothing.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday January 19 2018, @03:44PM
Not that I'm criticizing Walmart - it seems like a genuinely nice thing for them to do. (Actually, my bro-in-law is a Walmart pharmacy tech, and I know the real reason they're doing this is because people will just leave bags of random pills/needles/etc. on the counter and then they have to dispose of them anyway.)
But AFAIK there's still nothing wrong with grinding them down and mixing them with used coffee grounds, then throwing them out. And you can get a nice cup of coffee from the process, too.
http://healthland.time.com/2010/04/30/whats-the-best-way-to-get-rid-of-leftover-prescriptions/ [time.com]
This sig for rent.