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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

can/does any pharmacy fill methadone Rx in 40mg?

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Waywardtom

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Sep 20, 2015
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can/do any pharmacies fill Rx methadone in anything different than 10mg or 5mg, like 40mg? new health insurance company has rx limits of # 60 pills for 25 days and ive been rx'd much more than that as a 13 year history of opiate rx (oxycontin and oxycodone) for chronic headache and going on one year methadone to titrate down and off. my current pharmacy informs that they can only order in 5mg or 10mg
 
This isn't typically something that we would handle here in Basic Drug Discussion, but I can give you a break. As far as my knowledge is concerned, the only places that are allowed to carry 40mg Methadone wafers are Methadone Clinics and Hospitals/Detoxification spots. That's pretty silly about your medication, I'm sorry to hear you have to go through this. They certainly are getting more and more anal about the prescribing. In my neck of the woods, there's a lot more talk about MME (Morphine Milligram Equivalence) than anything else. I have actually yet to hear that you can actually only fill a specified number of pills at once.

This is so arbitrary it's hard to wrap my head around.
 
Where I live... most pharmacies have methadone in a liquid. Getting a dr to prescribe it to just any pharmacy is another story. The only Dr I have experience with only works with one pharmacy so they can call him on his day off if there's an issue or what have you. Does your limit apply to liquid medications... or bypass it? Maybe something to look in to.
 
Probably something that we should've touched upon already, is the wildly different practices in regard to the prescribing of Methadone from country to country or even between states/provinces. In the United States, the DEA is the Reichschancellor of all Methadone programs. Methadone can only be given to known addicts for purpose of addiction maintenance, at a clinic. This is typically a brick and mortar outfit where one attends 7 days per week to consume a dose under supervision. Liquid Methadone has become by far the most common form used for addictive maintenance purposes, although 40mg wafers are still used in some hospitals and addiction programs.

If you are prescribed Methadone for analgesia in the United States, it means almost universally 5mg and 10mg tablets. Methadone elixir is not prescribed for analgesia in the United States. It's my understanding that the laws are considerably more lax in Canada and that there are significantly more possible locations (pharmacies), at which the patient can get dosed each day. In the United States, it's not unheard of for folks to drive 2 hours each way to an urban center, every single day, to obtain Methadone.

I can only speak truly for the American system. Although, I'm going to close this, simply because it's not really something that would typically fall within our purview.
 
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