Saturday, May 20, 2006
(3:57 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
My Life as a Presumed Meth Addict
Within the last several months, the State of Illinois has implemented a new law dictating that products containing pseudoephedrin (apparently a key ingredient in crystal meth) should be available only behind the pharmacy counter and that anyone purchasing said products should be required to produce identification so that his or her name and address can be logged, along with the size of the purchase.In my own life, I have found that the most effective way to cope with my allergy symptoms is to take the normal 24-hour Claritin, combined with occasional doses of a ibuprofen-based "cold and sinus" medication. If I take Claritin D for several days in a row, I begin to cough up blood; by regulating the decongestant separately, I avoid this problem. As such, I very frequently have to wait a long time -- normally during a period when I am feeling like utter shit and don't really want to be out in public anyway -- to make a very small purchase ($4.38, most recently).
On Friday, when the allergy season apparently began in earnest, I walked into my local neighborhood Walgreens to find that there was a wide assortment of allergy products available right out there on the shelf. Assuming the stupid law had been revoked, I eagerly grabbed a box and went to the register. Yet when I got home and started taking it, I found it rather ineffective and felt drowsy. I thought it was just a severe allergy attack, but no -- looking at the label, I found that it was a new formula without pseudoephedrin.
I just got back from another trip to Walgreens where I got the thing I normally get, so we'll see how it works, but the initial evidence seems to indicate that pseudoephedrin is an essential ingredient for my quality of life. So now, unless the law is repealed at some point, for the rest of my life the state is going to have a record of my purchase of cold and sinus medicine. It's a minor thing, of course, but it seems petty for the state to require the pharmacist to hassle me every time I buy the stuff, especially since my "just-in-time" inventory system means that I very actively need it every time I go out and buy it.
Interestingly, before this law was implemented, I had no idea that the cold and sinus products I was using were at all connected to crystal meth -- now, however, I am starting to suspect that a meth habit might be the best possible way to solve my allergy problems once and for all.
