PE = CRAP

[captpackrat]

I thought this phenylephrine stuff was junk.  Turns out I'm right.

The government banned phenylpropanolamine, which worked fantastic for me.  Then they severely restricted the sale of psuedoephedrine and ephedrine (it has to be kept behind the counter, you have to present ID and then fill out a form to buy no more than 3.6 grams per day, or more than 9 grams per month, any more is a misdemeanor).  The pharmaceutical companies have been pushing phenylephrine on everyone, even though it's no more effective than a placebo.

Comments

[harlequeen.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, we can still get psuedoephedrine. It's behind a counter, but no forms. I guess if you tried to buy lots of packs you wouldn't be able to. It does work so well.

[jdarkwulf.livejournal.com]

I was just griping the other day that PE didn't work for me, and I had to jump through hoops to get pseudoephedrine.

Now I have proof that it's not just me!

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

I am so conflicted -- as much as I loathe having to go to the counter to get meds like that, hearing the very real impact it made on meth production makes me think it was the right choice.

Meth wasnt a big problem in NYC but I heard it was here in DUbuque, and really destroyed this town for a good while. A lot of families destroyed, a lot of real property ruined -- it's one of the reasons the mother of my nephews only sees 5 out of 6 of her kids. She lost one because she got sucked into that meth crap. Of course she is to blame, but making things that much harder, if it didn't 'save' her, maybe would have killed the culture behind it that she got sucked into. I really don't know. SHe's ok now, but her family is forever minus one, since they adopted her little girl out.

[rummy-raccoon.livejournal.com]

The fight against meth is odd. I grew up in the country where a lot of people made meth. Making supplies harder to find isn't going to do a thing against the big problem. After it got harder to find current supplies, they just found new sources. Last time I asked, the current source for ephedrine are the red/maroon livestalk salt licks which yield a great amount of ephedrine. Also they used to make what they called anhy. This was a method were once you had everything mixed you would bubble anhydrous ammonia gas into your solution to change the PH as part of the chemical extraction. This yielded a very clean pure powdery meth. After this hard to find gas got too hard to find they just started making crystal meth which uses sulfuric acid and iodine and produces shards of meth. The last person I knew who was cooking dope said he learned how to do it in a class in prison. It was done with the intention of educating people to recognize the signs of a meth lab, but come on, I dont buy that.

Anyhow, phenylephrine is crap and doesn't work on me. I have to buy cough syrup and a box of pseudophedrine when I'm sick

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Well the numbers showed that it's working around here. (WI/IA/IL area, where it was a big problem all that long ago.) Sorry you are inconvenienced AND you aren't getting any meth results.

[deffox]

I've already learned that the 'PE' is worthless from wasting money on it.

I don't go through much psuedoephedrine, but it's annoying to wait on a pharmacist to get a box rather than getting it off the shelf.

Wiki links to a story of someone pleading guilty to buying more than 9 grams in a month. He wasn't doing anything meth related; just overusing it.