I know I have a slightly different perspective on issues related to medicine/health than a lot of folks here (after getting clean from dope in 08 I went back to become a public health social worker). During grad school, I worked as a pharmacy tech at both a CVS and then at a community health center clinic pharmacy. I have a ton of respect for the vast amount of knowledge that pharmacists have, and how much they get pigeon holed into being glorified retail workers who are judged mostly on how quickly they can churn out scripts, rather than how much care they put into doing it. Pharmacists are dealing with doctors who won't return calls, patients who want their meds yesterday (even when they're not due until next week), and insurance companies that constantly change their rules and guidelines in ways that lead to people suddenly not having benefits to cover a fill. Pharmacists are experts in how drugs work in the body, what drugs interact with others, and what therapies might work best under different circumstances.
I can't tell you how many times a physician would send a patient to the pharmacy thinking they were getting some pain meds or with the expectation that their meds could be filled right away, only for the pharmacist/techs to have to deal with angry customers screaming at them about something they have no control over. Ever had to deal with a prior authorization? Pharmacists have no control over what insurance companies decide to require extra documentation from the doctors in order to cover, and pharmacists cannot make the prescriber get in touch with your insurance companies any faster, but the only person available to go ape-shit at is... you guessed it... the pharmacist.
Pharmacies actually are a really awesome tool that gets super under used. I just got vaccinated for CoVID and flu yesterday, took me 15 minutes, didn't have to make a doctors appointment or deal with the whole process of going for a visit in a clinic. I was in and out with my vaccines in less time than it takes to get my blood pressure done at a PCP appointment. Pharmacists used to have more freedom to prescribe and dispense certain medications - you used to be able to get things like codeine cough syrup from the drug store just by talking with the pharmacist about your symptoms. Now its a whole doctor's visit to potentially be told to buy some shitty OTC cough medicine that doesn't work nearly as well.
Unfortunately, for folks that get prescribed things like suboxone, or regular pain medications, the pharmacist ends up being someone you have to interact with far more often than most people. It also means that you do encounter the potential for pharmacists who have a lot of stigma about drug users, either from personal beliefs or from the infinite number of shitty experiences they've had when dealing with people who use drugs. I could go on for days recounting how many "I'm going to relapse and kill myself if you don't fill my gabapentin a week early" conversations I've had when I was a tech. We (druggies) aren't always the easiest to deal with.
Two quick stories: Long after I got clean from heroin I struggled with insomnia and ended up on ambien to help manage it. I was rx'd 10mg a day, 30 pills a month. I had figured out at one point that I could fill it typically on day 27 or 28, even on a 30 days supply, and would often fill it a couple of days early and in theory have 2 extra pills/month. This also made it easier for me to take more than I needed sometimes chasing that ambien euphoria. One weekend, I put in a refill and headed over to CVS expecting to get my fill a couple of days early as usual. This night however, the pharmacist called me over and told me that I had to wait until Monday and he wouldn't fill it early. He accurately called me out on having 2-3 day early fills every rx for the last 2 years. I got so heated and started pushing back - I work in public health! I'm in recovery! How dare you! He just looked at me and said - "You might want to talk to your doctor about your reliance on ambien because it seems like it might be becoming an issue for you. I'll fill it Monday, but no sooner". I stormed out, but it did make me realize that he was right - I was filling it early, and expecting the system to enable me to keep doing it indefinitely. This eventually helped me get ready to come off of it and it's been about 2 years now since I regularly took it. That guy did me a favor.
When I worked in pharmacy, we had a lot of people on government assistance and people who were on very expensive HIV medications. This one day we had a guy put in a bunch of prescriptions - like 15 total, many were HIV, HepC, or related. There were also 3 scripts that weren't: Gabapenin, Suboxone, and Clonazepam. This guy's insurance was rejecting the fill because he hadn't recertified his insurance for the year. Some of his meds were refrigerated and we could only hold so much on hand. If he didn't get his meds that day, his meds could go bad before the end of the month and we wouldn't be able to fill the RX. This meant we had to figure out how to get this guy his medication (30,000$ worth IIRC) without insurance covering it. We spent the day dealing with insurance, trying to get coverage, and then eventually getting the clinic to cover the cost while they worked on getting his insurance back online. End of the day comes, we get the meds covered by the clinic, and the guy shows up for his RX. He takes the gaba/subs/clonazepam out, and throws the rest of the meds in the trash in front of us.
The pharmacist I work with bolted out the door, dove into the trash, pulled those meds out and chased the dude down as he was walking out onto the street. We could hear her screaming at him "YOU UNGRATEFUL MOTHER FUCKER YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE DID TO MAKE SURE YOU GET THIS STUFF SO YOU DON'T FUCKING DIE". She came back in, and got right back to filling scripts.
Pharmacists deal with a lot.
oh,,, read below... 
