Pharmacy wont give me my sub

Hello
^{I have been on Suboxone for years and at this office for three. The doctors in this office come and go and the only person that really knew me was the clinical pharmacist, who left six months ago. The demanded in December that I go from 4 a day to three. He told me that he would be lenient and for me to just do my best. However, he give me hell when I needed the refill a week early. now this month, I call and my meds are due to be out on Friday, the Doctor calls them in and the insurances pays but the pharmacist (same one for over a year) said she will not let me have it until Friday. This has never been the rule, I have always picked them up a couple days early for convenience and because I freak if I run really low. The Doctor knows my father had a massive stroke in October and I care for him 3 days a week more than an hour away. I am furious because I feel like they are treating me like a child, or dangling a carrot over my head. Do any of you have to wait until the DAY you are out to get them? I am in Virginia.

Teresa}

Hello,
I too am in Virginia. Since it is a controlled substance they are supposed to give you your meds on the day you are supposed to, not earlier. I found for myself that each pharmacy is different, when I would fill at Walmart they wouldn't let me have it a day to soon, but when I went to CVS they were willing to 2 or 3 days early. I think it has alot to do with the insurance, but in your case the insurance has already paid, the pharm is holding out on you. Maybe she has seen a pattern of you coming in early each month, I don't know. Maybe the pharm that you go to maybe a little stricter about it, it could be a slew of reasons. I wouldn't take in personal though, if it is too early to get it then you should have some left from the previous script. Now if you ran out early that's a different story, and maybe they have caught on to that and are making you suffer, I know that sounds terrible but it could be possible. Anyway I hope you have enough to get you through the next few days.

I'm in VA too, Richmond area, and I've been using a Rite Aid. I've been getting mine about 3 days early each month, and they never gave me any trouble. I'm surprised if the insurance paid that they would give you a problem, so it must be a jackass pharmacist. Yeah, don't take it personally, it's a Schedule III narcotic so they throw red flags up all day long about this stuff. I just switched my Sub script to CVS, so it remains to be seen if they'll give it to me early....I like getting it as early as possible because, hey, the more extra pills I save up the better.

Oh yeah Rite Aide has done that to me just recently , i think that they just changed it to where its the day before you run out ..but I think they do that to just the people that are taking Suboxone.

CVS will not let me get my script except on the day its due. Over the holidays I had to show proof (airline iteniary/meeting agenda) to my sub doc that I was going to be out of town for a meeting and would run out of sub before I got back into town. My doc wrote me a script and told me to fill the day before I left. I went to CVS and the Pharmicist went off on me and said I am not giving you your "feel good drugs" early. She of course had to say it loud enough for others to hear....so I chose to be louder to her and told her she was not my doctor and I already explained to my doc and your tech the reason for the early refill. I told her to call my doctor to verify........She said Oh I will call your Dr but not till Monday it is Saturday and I dont want to get yelled at for bothering the Dr because you are trying to get an early refill......I said do you think my doc would have written the prescription today's date if he didn't know the circumstances......I said fine if you wont call him I will......and I did...I called the answering service...they paged him and he called the pharmacy......She slammed the phone down and took 45 minutes to fill the script.......she suddenly took great interest in working the drive up window.........(bitch). When my script was done...I was standing right there the whole time and of course she yelled out my name. I paid for my script.......wished her a good day and a Merry Christmas. I then added if I hated my job as bad as she hated hers I would quit........she ignored me. I know there is laws about controlled substances and they have to follow them but customer service is part of the job...I think they love the power....and some want to be the police......while others are great professionals that care about thier customer and use common sense. I know the feeling of panic about running low...but I will tell you that sub is the one prescription that I take as prescribed...I hope you havent run out and that your going to be ok...just remember 2 mg normally will keep you from having w/d symptons....not sure why I shared this story but I have been holding it in. I hope you make it till you get your script. Good Luck

Wow, I'm sorry that happened to you. I also do not know where the mean-spirited attitude comes from...before I found out about Suboxone, I was caught at several pharmacies trying to fill fake prescriptions, and it was amazing the wide range of attitudes among pharmacists. I had one guy who said he wasn't going to call the police, but that I needed to get to treatment right away. He had compassion. Mostly, they would go through the roof, screaming that the police were on the way and what a pathetic slimebag I was. I mean really, really nasty. I tried to tell one lady pharmacist that I couldn't help it, to please not call the police, I would never come back to that store, and she looked at me and said "all of you dirty, diseased drug addicts should be in prison the rest of your lives." Now, I kind of wonder why someone (one of my multiple therapists, doctors, pharmacists, PO's, anyone) ever told me about Suboxone. No, it took until I went to jail and another prisoner told me he had taken Suboxone and it had helped him a lot (he was there for a non-drug related offense) for me to ever hear about this miracle drug! Unbelievable. For 12 years, all that was thrown at me was NA/AA, which I tried over and over and over and still relapsed again and again. But was Suboxone ever suggested as an option to try? Never once. Weird.
JD

You know you bring up a good point. I found out about suboxone from my dealers girlfriend......one day she said I can't believe how much money you spend each week on Loratabs.......have you ever thought about stopping with suboxone. Suboxone...........what is that? She then told me all about it....wrote out the name of the drug on a piece of paper and I jumped on the internet and ran across this site. One week later I was on subs and my life started all over..The funny thing is that my dealer was on suboxone and when I told him I was going to get on it (I didn't tell him how I heard about it) he was cool about and has never texted me again to tell me he was holding......that is amazing. I wonder how others learned about suboxone........

I'll tell you one thing, I went through three 28-day inpatient programs, two 6-month inpatient programs, and four multiple-month outpatient drug programs since 2002 and NEVER, EVER did anyone tell me about Suboxone. I'm pretty sure that Sub has been available in the US since 2002 or 03. Something's really, really wrong with that picture.
JD

Oh yeah, 2 years ago I overdosed on Vicodin and had congestive heart failure. At the end of the 2 week hospital stay, a psychiatrist put me on Naltrexone, and told me it might help. Yuck!! It didn't help at all. It's basically the same thing as naloxone, it just fills up the opioid receptors and blocks other opioids. When I took the first dose, I had a major panic attack. I took it for about a week, and then stopped so I could go back to getting high. Why in the world that doctor didn't tell me about Suboxone I'll never know.
JD

Wow how ironic, I too have been through multiple rehabs for opiates and no one even said a word about suboxone! Methadone, Methadone Methadone...I'm not knocking it, Im sure i would have tried methadone maintenance but I couldn't commit to going everyday. I don't understand why sub is such a secret. I too heard about suboxone through a using/dealer buddy that was on suboxone herself. She even called her doctor that same day and talk to him about getting me in. She even rode with me the hour and half trip to introduce him to me and now its been almost 4 yrs later!! WOW, never expected that. This is interesting hearing how people were introduced to subs, since its a secret hush hush drug in the mental health/ behavorial part of the medical community. NA/AA may work for some but for this addict it didn't and I thank God everyday for this gift he has given me, Im so grateful to be alive today!!!

I am in school right now to become a chemical dependency professional, and the amount of ignorance about Suboxone that I encounter is shocking. I think Shelwoy is in an addiction studies program and she has said similar things. I was so fed up with it by the end of last quarter that I gave a presentation about Suboxone treatment and outed myself to my whole class as a former Sub patient. OMG! They were shocked! But it was a good opportunity to do some education.

I think it takes a while for these kinds of shifts to happen. The medical model of treating addiction is still pretty new. Using research-based best practices to treat addiction is still pretty new. It will take a while for attitudes to evolove.

When I first got on antidepressants...22 years ago (gawd, I'm gettin old) - it was a huge frakking deal. You had to go to an inpatient facility to go on psych meds so you could be monitored, the side effects were hideous, and the stigma was very real. Everyone I encountered had some idea about how I could just "think" or "behave" my way out of depression, even though it was killing me. Taking meds for mental issue was somehow shameful or weak and people just didn't get it. Even the people who were cool and understanding about it didn't get it.

Then Prozac happened. Now everybody takes or knows someone who takes or has taken an antidepressant. It's just a normal part of our culture. The neurotransmitter-imbalance therory of depression has become like gospel. People trot out the "it's just like a diabetic taking insulin" analogy about their antidepressants all the time, and it's pretty much accepted - even though the science supporting that theory of depression and the efficacy of most antidepressant drugs isn't really that strong.

But still, cultural shift. As more people become dependent on opiate pain meds, Suboxone and other buprenorphine drugs will become commonplace. Now that big-pharma has seen that there is a profitable market for treating addiction with medication, I bet you we will see more drugs targeted at different addictions coming out. We are just the patients on the leading edge of this trend.

Still, I agree that the ideology of absenence-only based recovery causes health-care providers to hold back the Suboxone option from their clients totally sucks.
_________________
You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

-Jack Kornfield

Yeah I heard about Suboxone from a friend that I used to hook up from. He actually gave me a couple one time when I was comming down off perc's. I couldn't believe how good I felt in like a 1/2 hour after. He told me all about how to get a Dr but I never went through with it until I was ready. Strange world.

G

I know I'm coming into this conversation way late, but I also heard about subs from my dealer. I am also on probabtion and had been in jail for pills and do you think anyone mentions subs as treatment. NOPE! Ridiculous.