[lobochrome]

Exactly. It also reduces pharma waste since you only get as many pills as the doctor prescribes. In Japan, where I currently live, I have barely any leftover medicaments in my drawers (where my prescriptions usually are packaged in individual sachets).

There were tons of leftovers in the EU, where I lived before - that's wasteful. Not a little bit of plastic.

[eddythompson80]

Tons of leftovers of prescription medication? WTH?

[pests]

It's a thing for some.

> first [Canadian] National Prescription Drug Drop-Off Day, which resulted in the return of more than two tonnes of unused medications

> The first is inertia: it takes effort to discard something, but no effort to leave it where it is. The second is a natural inclination to keep something that might be useful later on, particularly if future procurement involves inconvenience or expense.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3191684/

[highhedgehog]

Yeah, it builds up over time. I do not take any medication on a schedule, but over years you stack up ibuprofen and stuff like that.

Every single person I know has a drug drawer with expired drugs.

[wesleychen]

I always end up with a bunch of extra painkillers after getting dental work done (wisdom teeth removal, gum graft, etc.)

[pests]

I used to take an as-needed medication that would build up in times when it wasn't needed if I just let the pharmacy autofill everything that "should" be used up.

[sweetjuly]

Most pharmacies in the US will count out each pill/mL. Most insurers will not pay for more than three months at a time and so the pharmacy won't give you more than 90 days * your daily dosage.

[pests]

People skip or miss doses (hey, the problem the thread topic is trying to solve) and then pharmacies will auto-fill perscriptions that should be empty. Some people are on as-needed medications that also get auto-filled. I posted some more in a sibling comment.

[acosmism]

i never thought of blister packs that way but they seem key!

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

The most common medication is so cheap that I don't think the US pharmacy handling is worth it. And few packs I've had are more than 90 days worth of pills, with the exception of some really cheap stuff (as in $10 per pack of 100).

Picking up common prescription medication consists of me walking into a pharmacy - any pharmacy! - with my prescription, handing it to them, and telling them "one of this please". They will then immediately retrieve the pack of that medicine, ask me some questions to check for allergies etc. and hand it to me. I don't have to have the prescription sent to a specific pharmacy then wait for them to have the bottle ready and verified by a pharmacist.

[Elfir3]

Same here, with the added benefits that the prescription is digital. Also, in my go to pharmacy my wife account is linked to mine, so she can pickup my medication as soon as my call with the doctor is done.