Essential med I'm on discontinued by manufacturer FML!

Post Reply New Topic

I called my pharmacy today to refill my Doxepin and they told me, "hey yeah oh btw, the pharmaceutical company is discontinuing Doxepin permanently and we only had 35 pills left(I need 9 a day)". After searching through Canada's crap drug shortage database I find a notice buried in it's listings that it was discontinued October 23rd. Of course the useless pharmacy didn't bother to inform me until New Years Eve when they had just 35 pills left.. Thanks a lot. I called around and managed to find 100 more pills, of only 65 of which I can get filled at a time since 100 of them are dispensed at a time according to my script. The rest will no doubt be swiped up by other patients before I get to them.

Even with Canada having pretty much the most expensive generic drug prices in the world, it still wasn't enough for f*****g greedy big pharma to continue making them. Canada's drug security f*****g sucks, in many cases relying on a single drug company to manufacture a drug for the whole country, and if something goes wrong, well tough s**t. The one f*****g med that I am completely dependent on to keep my severe IBS and severe chronic urticaria in check has to be discontinued! OF COURSE! FML! The closest drug to match it is Amitriptyline which is only 1/3 of the strength as Doxepin. I don't even know how I am going to switch from my massive dose of Doxepin 225mg to anything remotely comparable on Amitriptyline. I'm f****d. I hate my garbage life.


Excuse me while I go cry

That su@ks big time. Sometimes I have trouble getting my meds here in USA and it is scary. I have some weird chronic health problems too. One of my meds I can get in Canada. Sometimes I have to order from GB. I get totally panic-stricken when I can't find my meds sold anywhere.

It looks like there are several brand names of doxepin. Does anyone make this in another country?

this wont help ur trouble, but i am very sorry it happens to u, and on such a date too. had a simmilar experience, tho in my case it was mess made by our government. well at least u have a supply for a few days and might be able to arrange a safer transition. maybe there is a new med that would suit u, and u dont yet know about it. tho ofc this sucks, emergencies like that can never do any good. again, i empathise, if its worth anything. hold on.

Can you tell the pharmacy that you’re going to be out of town for a while and get an advance refill in order to get the other supply you found? Ive gotten early refills that way.

I don't even know where to start to find it in another country. From what I can tell it is still made in the US. It was only made by one company here in Canada, Apotex, and they decided that the profits didn't meet their greed threshold.

They won't let any advance refills more than 3 days worth I think. I have this weird script that has like 33 refills dispensed 100 x 25mg at a time. I didn't listen to my gut instinct. 8 months ago I thought to myself, "well geez, I would be really f****d if this medication were to suffer a drug shortage. I really should ask my doctor to dispense 90 days worth so I could hoard them". I would still have been screwed in the end but at least I would have more of a buffer to plan my next step. Lesson is... always hoard medication! 1 in 10 drugs in Canada are either in a shortage or unceremoniously discontinued by the pharmaceutical company.

Thankfully I have a doctor who allows me to drop in any day that he's in the office, no appointment needed, but he isn't back until the 2nd. I have 12 days left of Doxepin. I may drop in to see my doctor and have him write me a bunch of scripts that I can take to multiple pharmacies and hoard whatever remaining Doxepin I can find. I will have to switch to Amitriptyline or Nortriptyline(Amitriptyline's active metabolite). I am scared especially if I have to wean off Doxepin first. My chronic urticaria is so absolutely unbearable when it is not controlled by my meds that I just want to die.

Im so sorry. I wonder if you can get an approval to import it from the States. It sounds like a necessary med.

getting your doctor to stock you up sounds like your best bet for now. i known of this happening in similar situations. best of luck.

The Canadian pharmacy I use accepts my US doctor's prescriptions.

I am googling some to get you started. I don't know enough about you, but I would try calling some of these places in the US:

https://www.blinkhealth.com/

While it is technically illegal for a US pharmacy to accept a Canadian prescription, that is also true of the Canadian medications that are shipped to me. Apparently there are some work rounds. For example, my Canadian pharmacy has a doctor who reviews my scripts before mailing to me.

Perhaps your doctor has a colleague in the US who would write a prescription for you.
Or perhaps you can get over the border to a US doctor.

A bit more risky, but some do it, is to import the medications from India, for example, and you don't need a prescription for those meds.

Is there a forum for your particular condition? That is where I got my first lead to Canadian and British pharmacies.

I'll keep looking around a bit.

Try some of the big mailorder companies in Canada. They may still have more available.

https://www.canadadrugsdirect.com/products/doxepin

New Zealand drugs store ships worldwide:

https://www.kiwidrug.com

Another world wide drug store. This one and the previous one require no prescription. In New Zealand, the pharmacy has a local doctor that reviews what you want.

https://mens-health-ph.com/?search=doxepin&x=0&y=0

That's it for now. Let me know if you need more searches. Or just go ahead and do more google searches yourself.
Good luck!

If you import them from anywhere other than the US, I would check with Health Canada first. (Or have someone else check for you so there is no link). Depending on the drugs class you can’t legally import some even if you didn’t need a prescription in the country of export. Even from the US actually, but as previous poster said you might be able to get a prescription there. Border Services could end up seizing the meds.

Border control can seize the meds in transit. That is true. It is a risk I take. I've never had it happen and to do without the meds is more horrible than border control.

So I saw my doctor and crisis averted for now. He says there is stockpile of doxepin 50mg in a warehouse that should last until late september, so at least I don't have to make any decisions for now. He gave me the 25mg amitriptyline I asked for as well to make up for the 25mg of doxepin I would lose by switching to the 50mg capsules since I was on 225mg.

I honestly love that doctor, drop in any day, no appointment needed and he takes my hives seriously, isn't stingy with medications at all.

I will look into seeing if getting doxepin from another country is viable and affordable in the meantime. Thanks for everyone's support.

Which one of these have you used? Have you found the meds to be legit?