Et Tu Pfizer?

(Warning: The following may contain whining and alleged victimization.)

I've been sick for the past week. It started out with severe flu-like symptoms but the body-ache went away after 24 hours leaving me with the congestion and cough. In the past I have tried most of the decongestants with little success except for Sudafed Non-Drying Sinus. That stuff rocks! I mean, you can feel your sinuses clear within two minutes of taking the pills. Seriously.

This particular product, along with all of the other meth-making decongestants, has been kept behind the pharmacy counter for at least the past year. You have to show ID and you have to sign. You also are limited to the number of boxes that you can buy.

Today, however, I have been to four pharmacies and have been unable to locate Sudafed Non-Drying Sinus. Two of the pharmacists said that they had never heard of it to which I replied, "you have kept it behind the pharmacy counter for months. I have bought it here many times." The other two claim the product is no longer available.

The first pharmacist, one of the two that said it had been discontinued, prompted me to look on the Sudafed website. My med of choice is in the exact middle of the picture of all of the Sudafed products. If you ask the website for information about it, you get all of the pros and cons and other stuff listed on the box. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere is there anything saying that it has been discontinued. And so I went to three more pharmacies.

As a matter of fact, in the FAQ section it plainly states that even though they have intruduced a whole new line of decongestants, the old Sudafed medicines will still be available. (On their website, to answer the question why did they introduce an entirely new line of decongestants, they say, "As a responsible corporate citizen, we at Pfizer have been working in partnership with government, law enforcement and retailers to address the issue of continued consumer access to effective cold and sinus medicines. That’s why we’ve reformulated a new Pseudoephedrine-free line of decongestants called Sudafed PE™, which will be sold together with the original Sudafed line." So the old meth-making stuff is still available! That will surely stem the meth tide.)

Anyway, so I don't feel good AND I'm angry. I wrote Pfizer, the company that makes Sudafed, an e-mail asking for the location of a pharmacy in my area that sells the drug. Or they could update their frikkin' website. Their choice.

I'm done. I'm sorry that this lacked any real information. I'm sorry that it was poorly stuctured and didn't carry the reader along an "arc." I'm sorry that with this entry my blog has de-evolved into what most blogs are; a place for people to complain to a surely vast and imaginary audience.