Crazy Meds' Guide to Choosing an Internet Pharmacist

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Choosing an Internet Pharmacist

You can save a lot of money buying meds online, both from overseas pharmacies and from domestic pharmacies, you can also wind up with a bunch of counterfeit drugs. So do you know which ones are reliable? And what's the deal with buying meds from overseas?

Do they state that you can get medications without a prescription? If so, it's a scam. They're scamming somebody - you, the FDA and/or the DEA. So either you're going to get counterfeit drugs or the Feds are going to crackdown on them sooner or later, or both. Counterfeit medications are a growing problem and the FDA is quick to point the finger at Internet pharmacies, especially Canadian pharmacies as a major source of counterfeit drugs. In all fairness to our neighbors to the north, my Risperdal has come in a blisterpack, which is one of the anti-counterfeiting measures the FDA wishes to implement. I've yet to see a complaint about counterfeit meds from a Canadian pharmacy. However, the one example given of an imported medication on the FDA site was alleged to have been purchased from a Canadian pharmacy. The people I know who purchased benzodiazepines without prescriptions did so from domestic Internet pharmacies. The benzos were fake. The point is, if a "pharmacy" is willing to sell you drugs without a prescription, they're probably willing to cut all sorts of corners. They may or may not intentionally be selling you counterfeit drugs, but the odds are suddenly a lot better that you'll wind up with fake drugs. Go ahead and click on their ad to check them out, I could use the money, but please, don't ever buy any medication from some place that doesn't require a prescription. Even if you have a prescription, just don't deal with a site that promises meds without a prescription.
Look for accreditation. A Better Business Bureau logo is not worth squat. Real accreditation logos from pharmaceutical associations are what matters. Look for logos from The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites, The North American Pharmacy Accreditation Commission and The Canadian International Pharmacy Association. If the online pharmacy doesn't show one of these, then you don't want to order from them. I've done an informal survey of the pharmacies that advertise on this site (And if anyone is auditing me for Google's adsense - don't worry. I would get the URL by moving the mouse pointer over the ad, write it down and manually enter said URL into another browser window. I'm scrupiously honest that way. It's an Asperger's trait.). The good news is that the Canadian pharmacies were all accreditied. The bad news is that most of the domestic pharmacies were not. Go Canada! As for buying discount Ativan or Vicodin, if the pharmacy isn't accredited, please, don't deal with them.
Aren't there other countries besides Canada that have Internet pharmacies? Sure there are! I just wasn't up to looking into them when I had to start buying drugs from overseas. Canada was about as far as I could deal with at the time. After I'm through with everything else on this site I might investigate other countries and see what they offer in the way of prices, selection and accreditation.

Has someone else complained about the pharmacy in question? One thing the Internet is good for is voicing complaints, loudly and frequently. If someone has had a bad enough experience, they might just register a domain for the express purpose of voicing a complaint about something. Just enter the name or the URL of the pharmacy in question into Google and look at the nature of the results you get. If there are too many results, add words and phrases related to complaints like "delay," "wrong," "sucks ass."

You can do similar search looking for praise. Of course just like anywhere else people put far more energy into complaining about something than they would in praising it. And you often run into ads for the pharmacies. But you will find examples of people writing about how various Canadian pharmacies have been true money savers for them, or posting random newspaper articles about how Canadian pharmacies save money, and not just the usual testimonials on the pharmacies' sites. More often than not you'll just stumble across the mention of a pharmacy on a forum dedicated to discussing particular products or what not. I haven't found any examples of praise for pharmacies in conjunction with psychiatric medication in fora that are accessible by Google, which doesn't surprise me as such things are usually discussed in private. I've found in reading the online support groups that, in general, people are quite happy with the prices and service offered by the accredited online Canadian pharmacies.

But is it legal? You bet! You're allowed to bring a three-month supply of prescription medication with you from some distant land in you baggage. You're also allowed to have someone mail you a three-month supply of FDA-regulated medications. See for yourself. What's not legal is setting up a store-front operation to sell drugs imported, or even re-imported (i.e. manufactured in the US, shipped to Canada and then shipped back here) from other countries. The FDA is cracking down on such practices. While I'm all for making it easier for people to get affordable medications, you really shouldn't use such services. If the FDA shuts it down, I have no idea what the status of your money or your meds will be. Best you just buy from the pharmacies directly. That is legal. The FDA is waging a propaganda war against doing such, but their efforts to legally restrict the practice have failed. Prior to the overhaul of Medicare a bill co-sponsored by Representative Dan Burton would have made it easier to re-import drugs. The bill passed the House. Representative Burton is from Eli Lilly's congressional district. Under the Medicare overhaul the FDA will be asked to look into the safety of meds being imported, instead of just blowing a lot of propaganda in favor of the pharmaceutical companies. The key word is "ask" and not "require."

Certain classes of medications can't be transported over the border. You can't buy benzodiazepines, narcotics or stimulants from a foreign pharmacy. Even if you have a nice and legitimate prescription. If an overseas pharmacy promises you Ativan, Vicodin or Adderall, then they are a scam operation. Move on to someone else. I'm actually leery of buying anything that requires a triplicate prescription from an online domestic pharmacy. That's just the sort of thing that you just have to do in person as far as I'm concerned, but I am overly conservative about some things.

Canadian prescriptions need to be reviewed and approved by a Canadian doctor. That means in addition to faxing them your prescription, you need to supply them with a medical history and diagnosis. If they don't ask for that, they are questionable. Some may even ask you for a fax of a photo ID like a driver's license. If they do ask for it, you have to be honest and complete. Otherwise you may not get your meds. Laws may differ in other countries, and a fax of your prescription may be enough.

What about buying American drugs if you live somewhere else? I've read about people who have claimed to have done that, but I have no idea what the laws are in different countries. I know that we do have the best selection of medications in the world, we just pay through the nose for them. You'll have to contact the pharmacy about international shipping. Some Canadian pharmacies will ship medications available in Canada to Japan, and that's about all I know for sure. But you'll want to shop around, as their shipping charges to Japan may negate some of your savings.

Choosing a Pharmacist

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If you still have unanswered questions about this or other medications, including which one is, or combination of meds are the best for you, your best bet is to ask on Crazy Meds Talk. Better yet, if you want to let the world know how they worked out for you and want to help out others in their quest for the correct meds, join the party.
If you want to discuss your issues, I suggest checking out one of the various support groups online.
Otherwise, if you're letting me know about how much you like or hate the site, or need to let me know about medication effects in private, then just drop a note to jerod23 at gmail dot com Honestly, I usually don't have a lot of time to answer e-mail these days. The snide autoresponse message that may or may not hit your mailbox is going to tell you the same thing.
Another problem is that you may not get a response even if I wanted to send you one. You see, so many dickweeds with malicious intents and too much time on their hands have appropriated the crazymeds.org domain name to use for their spam, viruses and the like. Subsequently some lazy-ass e-mail protection software authors just go by the domain name, and not the IP address. So I've been blacklisted because of the actions of others. Or the software just doesn't like the domain name because of the "crazy" and/or "meds." Or your question about a particular medication will set off spam flags. So the e-mail just wouldn't go through regardless. Sorry.

Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine? Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.

Created Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Last updated Monday, May 24, 2010

Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets, those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about. And any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That's usually me, so just ask first. That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that's OK to just do. Go for it! Please. As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I'm cool with it.

All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won't necessarily happen to you. Nobody on this site is a doctor, therapist, or a pharmacist. We don't portray them either here or on TV. Only doctors can diagnose and treat an illness. Some doctors tend to get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don't be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you'll get every side effect from every medication. Self-prescribing is just as dangerous. All information on this site has been obtained through personal experience, the experiences of my friends, the experiences of people reported on online support groups, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site. Know your sources! As such the information presented here is not a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies listed after them in the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may or may not have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Always read the PI sheet that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away. If you didn't get a PI sheet, demand one. Loudly. Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to. We like them, or they're paid advertisements, or they're something you should read to make an informed decision about a particular med. Sometimes they're more than one of those things. But what's on those sites is their business, not ours. Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. And from time to time I do look at search terms used to find it in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited.

"Everything is true, nothing is permitted." - Jerod Poore