In a continuation of this week's theme of serving up posts laden with healthy advice, I now turn to the subject of when to throw out expired prescription drugs. The answer is short, sweet, and endorsed by most people—never.
Let me offer up an example. Five years ago I went to Wal-Mart to buy a desk for my son. Wal-Mart had the cheapest desks and I am a natural cheap American. Nobody should buy anything at Walmart, of course, because of their business practices—going deep into the hinterlands of China and finding people whose main occupation for the last four thousand years has been planting rice and then watching it die, and getting them to leap at the chance to make a dollar a day building desks. These slave laborers get even, though, at least with me.
The boxed Chinese desk was trundled out by a three and a half-foot tall Hispanic woman on a four-wheeled hand truck. Apart from not being gifted with much height, she was not a particularly muscular-looking lady, and it was not until I grabbed a corner of the box and attempted to raise it that I realized there must have been a professional power lifter helping her load that desk deep in that Wal-Mart's musty interior, because it weighed a few hundred pounds. My back popped out like it was one of Miley Cyrus' nipples, and I was diagnosed with sciatica, which is Greek for "incurable, crippling, pointless back pain." Among the many medications I was prescribed during my numerous visits to the bored sadists that the American medical profession attracts was a bottle of an anti-inflammatory which contained the warning MAY INCREASE BLOOD PRESSURE. DEATH FROM HEART ATTACK OR STROKE COULD RESULT.
So I didn't take that stuff. But I kept it, because if I ever want to spice up a dull party by having a heart attack or stroke, I've got the right dope in my medicine cabinet for it.
When my Significant Other and I merged households, it gave me an excellent opportunity to discard many expired meds, an opportunity that I completely ignored. Looking at my medicine cabinet, I notice I even kept my son's acne creams. My son has currently moved to Australia to avoid me, and even he is too old to have acne anymore and as for myself, if I get a pimple, I cherish it, as a cute infected reminder of my long-ago youth.
My girl is even worse than me in the arena of holding on to useless prescriptions, and she has a better system. First, she keeps no drugs in her medicine cabinet—that is reserved for costume jewelry. Drugs she actually takes are in one kitchen cabinet, while drugs she doesn't bother with are in another, along with over-the-counter pills and anything I accidentally leave out. This means when I am absent-mindedly rummaging for Aleve in her stash I can pick up a similar-looking bottle of stool-softeners and take a few of them instead, which I recommend if you really need an excuse to stay inside for the rest of the day.
She recently had surgery, and one of the fun things I got to do in conjunction with that was inject her with a blood thinner every day afterwards. Just when I was starting to enjoy this, her doctor told her it was no longer necessary, and to discard the remaining needles. Naturally we did no such thing—we keep them next to the oatmeal, so in case one of us has a craving for thinner blood, there's no need to leave the house. The used needles went into a little red box marked "Biohazard," which we were supposed to return to the pharmacy when full.
It's on top of the refrigerator. So we do keep medical waste in the kitchen, but we refuse to be self-conscious about it.
I'm sure a lot of other people do, too.
Let me offer up an example. Five years ago I went to Wal-Mart to buy a desk for my son. Wal-Mart had the cheapest desks and I am a natural cheap American. Nobody should buy anything at Walmart, of course, because of their business practices—going deep into the hinterlands of China and finding people whose main occupation for the last four thousand years has been planting rice and then watching it die, and getting them to leap at the chance to make a dollar a day building desks. These slave laborers get even, though, at least with me.
The boxed Chinese desk was trundled out by a three and a half-foot tall Hispanic woman on a four-wheeled hand truck. Apart from not being gifted with much height, she was not a particularly muscular-looking lady, and it was not until I grabbed a corner of the box and attempted to raise it that I realized there must have been a professional power lifter helping her load that desk deep in that Wal-Mart's musty interior, because it weighed a few hundred pounds. My back popped out like it was one of Miley Cyrus' nipples, and I was diagnosed with sciatica, which is Greek for "incurable, crippling, pointless back pain." Among the many medications I was prescribed during my numerous visits to the bored sadists that the American medical profession attracts was a bottle of an anti-inflammatory which contained the warning MAY INCREASE BLOOD PRESSURE. DEATH FROM HEART ATTACK OR STROKE COULD RESULT.
So I didn't take that stuff. But I kept it, because if I ever want to spice up a dull party by having a heart attack or stroke, I've got the right dope in my medicine cabinet for it.
When my Significant Other and I merged households, it gave me an excellent opportunity to discard many expired meds, an opportunity that I completely ignored. Looking at my medicine cabinet, I notice I even kept my son's acne creams. My son has currently moved to Australia to avoid me, and even he is too old to have acne anymore and as for myself, if I get a pimple, I cherish it, as a cute infected reminder of my long-ago youth.
My girl is even worse than me in the arena of holding on to useless prescriptions, and she has a better system. First, she keeps no drugs in her medicine cabinet—that is reserved for costume jewelry. Drugs she actually takes are in one kitchen cabinet, while drugs she doesn't bother with are in another, along with over-the-counter pills and anything I accidentally leave out. This means when I am absent-mindedly rummaging for Aleve in her stash I can pick up a similar-looking bottle of stool-softeners and take a few of them instead, which I recommend if you really need an excuse to stay inside for the rest of the day.
She recently had surgery, and one of the fun things I got to do in conjunction with that was inject her with a blood thinner every day afterwards. Just when I was starting to enjoy this, her doctor told her it was no longer necessary, and to discard the remaining needles. Naturally we did no such thing—we keep them next to the oatmeal, so in case one of us has a craving for thinner blood, there's no need to leave the house. The used needles went into a little red box marked "Biohazard," which we were supposed to return to the pharmacy when full.
It's on top of the refrigerator. So we do keep medical waste in the kitchen, but we refuse to be self-conscious about it.
I'm sure a lot of other people do, too.
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