Answer Addiction

Tag: traveling

  • Traveling with Prescription Medication? Here's What You Need to Know

    Traveling with Prescription Medication? Here's What You Need to Know

    Even non-controlled drugs may be regulated. Make sure to investigate the status of all your medications, prescription or otherwise. Don’t risk your vacation turning into an extended stay at a prison camp.

    The first time I flew to Canada, I was petrified about getting through customs and security. My fear was not from venturing into a new country, but from the controlled prescription drug I had tucked away in my carry-on bag. I had just filled the Adderall prescription at my local pharmacy, and I’d asked the clerk if I needed to carry the whole bottle or if I could just bring my pill carrier with the number of pills I needed for the trip (I was only staying four days). 

    “Oh no, honey,” she said, “this is a controlled substance, you probably have to declare it at the border.” DECLARE it? I was so scared going through security the next day that I’m sure the extra pat-down after the body scan was due to my nervous and probably suspicious behavior. 

    Fast-forward a year later and my daughter, who inherited my ADHD, was set to go on a trip to Japan. She called me in a panic, talking about prohibited psychotropics, documents and signatures, and a 30-day restriction. She was going for six weeks and Ritalin was on a list of flagged drugs for the country. 

    So, what do you do in these situations? Google produces a myriad of results that may or may not offer the correct information. In fact, some of the crowdsourced question-answering sites turned out to have completely inaccurate information. Had we followed the instructions on one site I Googled, my kid’s medication would have been confiscated at customs and my daughter arrested by Japanese police—like Julie Hamp was in 2015.

    Below I’ve compiled some questions that my family and others have asked when preparing to travel with controlled prescription drugs. The answers I’ve provided are based on my experience and research, but no resource can address every possible situation and laws change over time, so no matter what you find here, ALWAYS double-check the information with the TSA website if traveling within the U.S., or the embassy of the country you are flying to outside the U.S. 

    1. What types of prescriptions are controlled? 

    Most medications that you should worry about are categorized as narcotics or psychotropics. Narcotics are drugs that may relieve pain, while also possibly making you sleepy or dulling the senses. The term often refers to opioid and opiate medications but could mean others such as benzodiazepines. Psychotropics “affect the mind, mood, or behavior.” 

    Ask your pharmacist if your medication is controlled. You can also find this information in the paperwork that comes with your prescription or on the prescription bottle. 

    (Note: even non-controlled medications may be subject to regulation. Make sure to investigate the status of all your medication, prescription or otherwise, by following the guidelines below.)

    2. How do I find out if my medication requires special preparation or rules? 

    The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) tries to keep an updated list of substances and the countries that regulate them. Read their “General Information for Travelers Carrying Medicines Containing Controlled Substances.” At the end, click “Browse Regulations by Country.” You can also click on the sidebar links for “Narcotics” or “Psychotropics.” There, you will find links to the updated lists of medications and the countries that regulate them.

    *Note: You will need to know the chemical name for the medication, not its brand or commercial name. You can find that in your prescription records. 
     


    A list of countries that prohibit Ritalin (methylphenidate).

    3. How do I prepare my medication for my trip? 

    Find out what your destination country requires. For Japan, we learned that my daughter can only bring in a 30-day supply of her medication. Now, a Q&A website suggested shipping the additional week of pills to her in Japan. But we see how that worked out for Julie Hamp. In order to have enough medication for her entire trip, my daughter needed to complete special documents that were downloadable from the website of the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, Welfare page under “Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices”. Some of the INCB links do not have working URLs, so prepare to Google to find the right agency. You can also call the phone numbers listed in the country’s info.

    Start this process early. We started two months before my daughter’s trip to Japan. The process included filling out paperwork (including a statement from her doctor – more on that below) that we had to send to Japan ahead of the trip, and then we had to wait for the approval documents granting permission to carry the Ritalin into the country. It took three weeks to get all of the information we needed. If there was a mistake on any of the documents, we had to start all over. 

    *Note: Never modify documents issued by a government. Doing so invalidates the document and may be a crime in that country. 

    4. Does the 3-1-1 rule apply? 

    No. But it may make things easier if you do put your medication bottles together in a clear bag. The TSA may ask you to remove them from your bags. Depending on the rules of the country, you may need to alert the customs agents at the point of entry that you have controlled medications. Make sure that the meds and necessary documents are easily produced to expedite your time at customs. 

    5. Do I need a prescription or a doctor’s note? 

    Maybe. And look up the requirements for your destination country as you may need an additional document. The information we found for Japan in the INCB database specified that we would need a doctor’s note for her Ritalin. 

    6. Will I get into trouble for carrying pills without the prescription bottles? 

    It’s a risk. You could get the pills confiscated and/or have to undergo additional security checks (like a manual pat-down or search). To avoid problems, keep medication in its original container. Also, if you get stopped by police on the street in your destination city, it’s best not to have an unlabeled bottle of pills in your purse or pocket. 

    7. What if my medication is listed as prohibited? 

    Contact the destination country’s embassy to see if there is a way to get special permission to carry your medication. Some countries may prohibit certain medications entirely. If you’re headed to one of those countries and can’t get official permission, don’t risk it. Don’t assume you’ll be the  exception to the rule because you have a doctor’s note or you look a certain way. You don’t want your vacation to turn into an extended stay at a prison labor camp.

    8. I have a prescription for my marijuana, can I take it on a plane (in the U.S.)? 

    Do not bring marijuana when you travel internationally. Regarding domestic travel, the TSA issued a statement on medical marijuana that is unclear. Despite the fact that marijuana is a controlled substance, the TSA says they will overlook it. But what they “say” is not necessarily what they practice. They are not supposed to search my braids every time I go through, but they do—every single time. 

    9. What if I am on a road trip in another country and I get pulled over. Should I tell the officer about my controlled medications? 

    Officers probably are not concerned about your medications, unless they have reason to search the car. At that point, tell them about your controlled medications and exactly where they are located in the vehicle. 

    Customs checkpoints at the borders of countries follow the same regulations as with airplane arrival. So, have your medication together and your documentation handy just in case your vehicle is pulled aside for a search. 

    10. Do I need to worry about my controlled prescriptions when traveling in another country by bus or train? 

    Probably not on buses. This mode of transportation does not have security checkpoints like the TSA. But if there ever is a reason for a search, just disclose what medications you have and where they are located. 

    However, international travel by train may mean going through a security checkpoint. The train requirements for international travel may be similar to or more relaxed than the airports. Look on the train’s website or ask officials for more information when you book the ticket. 

    Whatever mode of travel you choose, be sure to plan early and do the research on how your prescription medication is treated at your destination. A few minutes at the right websites will yield a wealth of information. At the very least, it will save you some time and relieve anxiety at security checkpoints. On the other hand, it could keep you from spending your holiday in jail.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • True North and the Geographical Cure

    True North and the Geographical Cure

    What it was like then: misery that had me researching the methods and means of suicide in the middle of the night on my cell phone, back turned to my husband, who was fast asleep, and to my children, asleep between us.

    The geographical cure: false hope that a change in circumstance might transform us. Always seductive, isn’t it? But as I have learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, a change in external position on the map doesn’t reset the compass and point us to true north because we always meet up with the self we are, no matter where we are, by chance, by collision, by invitation. Bill Wilson writes in AA’s Big Book, “We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind: there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything! Ask any woman who has sent her husband to distant places on the theory he would escape the alcohol problem.”

    Each time I believed a vacation, a temporary reprieve from present conditions, would be the cure, the fix I needed: Jamaica, Mexico, Greece, Romania, Italy, France, Wisconsin, California, etc., etc.? Each time I was sent off to “recover” from my eating disorder, self-injury, alcoholism, and bipolar depression, to distant, inpatient programs: Arizona, Maryland, Texas, and Pittsburgh? I’d get on a plane, 30 pounds underweight, spend a month or two bullshitting my way to well, not starving, eating thousands of calories (but only because I was forced), not drinking (but only because no access to booze), not cutting (but only because no access to sharps), and claiming to feel mostly content (Ha!) with my restored (Too BIG!) body, but not too content because such rapid reversal of position would seem disingenuous to doctors and therapists (I know I still have so much work to do but gosh, I am optimistic this time!).

    Each time, I returned home and within weeks was back to restricting, purging, over-exercising, drinking, cutting, and lying. Nothing had changed at home (that is, within myself), so I kept traveling an insane circular route though a dark, abandoned, haunted house.

    Samuel Johnson, in his 1750 essay, “The Rambler,” might as well have been giving the lead for a 12-step meeting when he wrote, “The general remedy of those, who are uneasy without knowing the cause, is change of place; they are willing to imagine that their pain is the consequence of some local inconvenience, and endeavor to fly from it, as children from their shadows; always hoping for more satisfactory delight from every new scene, and always returning home with disappointments and complaints.” 

    Eventually, with honesty and a commitment to working my program, I found my way home. I did not disappear nor die, though for many years I tried to do just that. Difficult to remember that life from here: my now eight years stable life, my now divorced and independent life with a teaching job in Georgia; my own home with HoneyBea, my rescue dog; and purpose restored.

    But also from exactly here: on an artist’s residency in Ireland, where I have just had morning tea with writers and painters and composers around a kitchen table — warm scones with butter and blackcurrant jam; where the night before, we gathered around a long, candle-lit dining table for fish, roasted potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and coconut custard topped with a purple-black pansy, and afterwards, in the drawing room where we shared our paintings, writing, and music; where Bernadette, at 93, stood before us in her long red dress, her cane left by her chair, and recited, from memory, poems from her latest, and sixth book—“think of when/ the end will come/and then”; where I believe that I, too, might live to 93, still creating more and forward; where, prefacing my reading, draft pages from a book-in-progress, I told my new friends, “I am not supposed to be here. I was given up for dead. And yet.”

    At dinner, on the very first night of my stay, I noticed a fellow artist who had declined the kind offers of wine, and then the raspberry trifle spiked with sherry. So I said to him, as we were cleaning up dishes in the kitchen, “I don’t drink either,” because I am always searching for my tribe when I am not at home.

    “Are you a friend of Bill W.?” he asked.

    The next night he took me to the local 12-step meeting in the town of Cootehill and I was asked, for the next meeting, to give the “Lead,” which, in 12-step terms, means recounting in ten minutes’ time the story of what my life was like when I was drinking, what happened—the transformation to sobriety—and what my life was like now that I was free.

    “It’s easy to get lost,” I said. “Easier to stay lost so far from home. This meeting is an anchor—while you might be strangers, you know me and I know you.” As I was talking about my desperate drinking days, giving the drunkalog, it was as if I was telling the story of another Kerry—that is, the story of a fear-full woman, intent on wrecking herself in despair’s ditch, and who would be dead by 40 by active or passive suicide.

    What was my life like then? Locked in a room under 24/7 video surveillance with a thin mattress on the floor, eating bland spaghetti with a plastic spoon, though not really eating since I’d stopped that, too (a spoon and in isolation because I kept sawing my wrists with the tines of a fork in the hospital cafeteria). I kept trying to disappear and doctors kept locking me away. “We need to stop you from killing yourself,” they said. What it was like then: misery that had me researching the methods and means of suicide in the middle of the night on my cell phone, back turned to my husband, who was fast asleep, and to my children, who were curled up and asleep between us both. Plans, plans, plans. Misery that dogged me. What it was like then: impossible to ever be inside joy, to be part of the living, the loving, the longing for now and tomorrow and more of this life, and so I ruminated over the plans, plans, plans.

    And so, my recounting of that Kerry at the meeting in Cootehill? She seemed a remote wraith, no longer dogging me, with her doomsday threats: “Just wait. You’ll fall again.” What she now says? “Thank you for saving me.” I honor her and have compassion for her: she didn’t know how to love herself, how to use her voice, how to take risks in this world.

    But, too, what it is like now: years after my last dive into bipolar’s dark well and seven years sober, my thoughts can still wander off path and I can get momentarily lost, particularly when traveling away from home, alone, in distant places where I might not know anyone, might wonder if the geographical cure could work: maybe I can have a Guinness in Ireland? So I look for my tribe and go to meetings when far from home. In recovery, you seek fellowship no matter where you are. Because you are always HERE, NOW: one day at a time, even in the Irish countryside.

    But, too, what it is like now: I am in right alignment to myself, which means often at an odd angle to the universe, which means sometimes wobbly on that off-kilter axis, but mostly truly good. Such a simple word: good. An alleged root of “good” is the Indo-Eurpoean “ghedh”—to unite, to fit. I am united with myself and fit into my own part of this world. That is, with my ragtag tribe of survivors who know what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now—but a “Now” that only is possible if I remained committed to honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to find fellowship at home and abroad.

    View the original article at thefix.com