Left Over Meds

[StephenM]

In general I complete any course of medication I am prescribed. However sometimes one gets a few spares if you miss one or your medication gets changed. When my statin was changed I took nearly six weeks supply back to the chemist but would feel silly about taking back half a dozen statins (easy things to forget) or a couple of lisinopril. The reason they get left over is that the foil packs have the day of the week printed on and if you don?t take them on the day printed you can get mixed up. A double dose of lisinopril gave me unpleasant temporary hypotension. What do you do with small amounts of left over meds? I feel tempted to either flush them down the toilet or put them in the general rubbish but my environmental lobe says ?no?!

 

[Caroline]

On the rare occaisions I get any left overs I put them in a storage box till I have some more then take them to the chemist as a job lot.

 

[Copepod]

As long as you know what / when you've taken, there's nothing to stop you using a forgotten tablet on a day not corresponding to the day on the foil - (re)use is always the best environmental approach. Then you won't have excess tablets to dispose of. It's always good to have a few tablets in reserve (check dates, obviously, and use oldest / nearest to use by date first) in case of delays in getting prescriptions from GP / chemist / during bad weather etc.

Official advice is to take left over medication to chemist shop, from where it will be taken for incineration.

 

[Vicsetter]

a) I would suggest you get a pill dispenser and decant a weeks worth of pills into it at a time. Then you can ignore the markings on the pill foil.

b) I wouldn't worry about the quantity of pill to be disposed of, in the scheme of things it's probably minute. Take them to the pharmacy for disposal so they don't get into the environment.

 

[Emmaathome]

I would second the pill "organiser" - something I used to joke about as an "old persons" gadget not so long ago! Used to kid my parents that I would buy them one for Xmas.....

Now have one for myself!! I only take 4 tablets a day (not a lot compared to some), but its the only way i can remember which i have taken. My memory isnt great, so everything helps!

I keep all my pills stockpiled in an ice cream tub and just fill up my organiser once a week. I also try to take note of how many i have left so i know to go collect some more when i'm down to a week's supply.