Kate wrote:By email
I've been reading this thread on the forum and have a decent level of experience in this.
Generally I find that particularly for stuff like Insulin (type 1 diabetes) and Antihypertensives, the very least a Pharmacist in France would require is a bona fide prescription, preferably written by a French or UK doctor in generic form . My pharmacist here in the PO lets me have stuff from time to time but only because he knows me and of my professional background.
Doctors vary. In some cases I've heard of situations where they insist on starting from scratch, but in a few cases they just write a repeat Rx from peoples' UK one. Depends on the doctor and the severity of the condition. I cannot believe that anyone with Type 1 diabetes would just start insulin willy nilly. Did you know that Insulin overdosage is the preferred method of suicide in UK doctors ?!
Spain is a bit more free and easy, but even there most of the Pharmacies in LJ or Figueres require some sort of evidence of prescription of what are classed as POM's (prescription only medicine) in UK.
This is entirely consistent with my experience, either directly or through close family, though I am obviously less authoritative than Kate's emailer.
I have asked French practitioners at odd times over the years for what are, for me, "repeat prescriptions" of my routine hypertensive drug, because I had simply run out. They have never attempted an investigation from scratch (and why would they, as the poster has said as I I understand him: no one is likely to invent a sudden need for 10mg ramipril without ever having it had it prescribed for them, and even if I did invent the need it wouldn't kill me). One, as I recall, asked me for evidence of what I was already taking, in the form of the card from my current dose, but otherwise they took my word for it. But they have always, as I recall, at least taken my blood pressure (though exactly what that might have proved is an interesting question). And they were entirely rational to take my word for it: that is one of the unfair advantages of being an apparently rational white bourgeois geezer with a slight command of French.
The relevant point for present purposes is that the doctors always gave me a valid prescription. I cannot imagine ever trying to swing a POM drug from a French pharmacist, as a random foreigner with no medical credentials, without a valid prescription, however harmless the drug might be if taken in the therapeutic dose. And when my doctor here became my "medicine traitant" (rather than an occasional soft touch for a repeat prescription), he stopped taking my word for things, and hit me for a very comprehensive set of "bloods" and a few urine tests.
My sister is in almost the opposite case: she has had the same (very thorough) "medecin traitant" for many years, has taken much the same drugs for most of that time, and had all her prescriptions filled at the same pharmacy just across from her home, mostly in the form that allows repeated doses to be filled, over time and within limits, from a single scrip. She has, I think, asked them about once in that time to "anticipate" the scrip that she had forgotten to get in time, but duly did get very soon after.
I have laboured this to point out, basically, that all this has nothing at all to with the original question: how do I get potentially lethal drugs, on line, without a valid prescription, from a firm, or a practioner, where neither of us know each other from a hole in the wall?
If you spend money on that prospectus, you are likely to lose it, and will deserve to do so. Even apart from the risk that the "insulin", if ever delivered, will just be salt water, and not even sterile?