Ever come across a bottle of out-of-date sleep medication or pain killer in your medicine chest? I bet you have. Out-of-date meds and even out-of-date over the counter stuff seem to proliferate like mushrooms in the dark every couple of years when we’re not looking. I’m convinced they come from “The Land of Disappeared Socks”. I swear the socks go in and the out-of-date expectorant comes out (bringing with it the occasional box of rice and mealey bugs designed to screw up the menu of your next romantic dinner.) When I discover these bottles or boxes, at first I feel silly for spending money on something I couldn’t use or didn’t need. Then I feel guilty. Funny, as a child, I somehow I never thought about the starving kids in Africa when I didn’t clean my plate, but as an adult I feel guilty for wasting perfectly good medicine when little “Kunta-Kinte” could’ve used it. Before you know it, I’m mad at the unfairness of it all and then I look around me at all the brightly colored pills and powders n’ things and for one second think, “This would make a FUN collage!”

Seriously. Ever ask the question, “What should be done with outdated meds?”
Well, because I think a lot, I did. Called a couple of pharmacies, did some searching on the net and guess what? Many still advise and practice the flushem’ routein even tho’ we discovered antibiotics, hormones, antidepressants, blood pressure meds etc. in our drinking water. One pharmacist I spoke to told me to crush the meds up with coffee grounds or kitty litter (so they are unuseable), put them back in the bottle and throw them out. I think I heard somewhere they are trying develop a program which would allow people to dispose of old meds at the same time they get rid of their other hazardous waste. I haven’t yet called to find out if my local hazardous waste department does this but I will. The WikiHow website says you can take expired meds to your local pharmacy or hospital where they will be properly disposed. However, not all hospitals and pharmacies have these facilities or public programs, mine don’t. I read that some hospitals and nursing homes just incinerate their old meds. Does this mean I can just chuck mine into the woodstove or the chiminea in the back yard? Hmmm.

And what of the fate of those perfectly good antibiotics in your bedside table? Chances are the reason they are there is because you decided to be a “Smart Alec” and not finish your course of medicine. “Well, I didn’t feel sick anymore and I hate taking pills!”, you told yourself. What about the time your pet potbelly pig died and your shrink gave you a scrip’ for an antidepressant that made you gain weight so you stopped using it and went on to something else? There are a lot of people out there who’d probably purchase the left overs to pop into their bosses morning libation just to see if they put away their fangs and become human again.
BUT SERIOUSLY, I don’t advocate anyone becoming a drug dealer or trying nepharious experiments on a boss no matter how psycho the boss. But isn’t it a shame we can’t do something with all those perfectly good meds? Why couldn’t we donate them to the local (local only) AMERICARES clinics. See, if people were only allowed to donate to their local AMERICARES clinic they’d have a way of tracking the meds. And patients could sign a waiver saying they know the meds were donated, absolving AMERICARES for anything. It’s simplistic and probably fraught with pitfalls and problems. And as usual insurance companies would step in (step on) this idea, as would the big, bad pharmaceaticals. I just wish something could be done that was maybe grass roots (shhh, don’t tell the drug companies!). It would be so nice to help people in my own back yard and maybe I could get rid of all those “Gawd Awful collages” I’ve made. >kidding<

Just a thought I caught flying by, what do you think?