Self-experiments have shown that antihistamines alone don't stop my eyes swelling shut in the springtime, and the only solution is the ingredient in Sudafed, pseudoephedrine.

Unfortunately, since I last bought PSE over-the-counter, things have gotten complicated.

Pseudoephedrine is a building block of methamphetamine, the white-trash drug of choice that can be cooked up with little or no education in a garage, coffeemaker, and probably even a pair of battery-powered socks if the humidity's just right.

Way back in the early '90s, when crack was more the fashion, I could buy a bottle of 100 pseudoephedrine tablets and go sniffle-free for months. Then the feds, frustrated that meth was becoming more popular than midnight basketball leagues, mandated blister packs for PSE tabs, figuring that if prison wasn't enough of a deterrent to meth-makers, sore fingertips would stop them cold.

(Can I help it if I think drug addicts are kind of funny? Yes.)

Imagine the DEA's surprise when not a single meth producer quit the business to sell Amway. So they took it up a notch.

let me set the stage here for saturday's exercise: Wal-Mart has the most tragicomically understaffed pharmacies in the retail industry. Do not ever be under the misapprehension that you can just get a prescription filled there while you wait, unless you enjoy studying the growth of cobwebs.

A cynic might claim the point of a dilatory pharmacy is to encourage waiting customers to shop the rest of the store, racking up sales. That cynic would be correct. And yet, there are not enough goods and services even in a Wal-Mart Supercenter to fill the time it takes to get a bottle of pills filled, labeled, and paid for, even if you get your oil changed and memorize the warning labels on every item in the store. So I don't take a prescription to Wal-Mart unless I plan to return the next day anyway.

Little did I suspect that a mere over-the-counter drug purchase would be tantamount to buying a Class IV narcotic. With an out-of-town check and no ID.

First, the name "over the counter" no longer technically applies to pseudoephedrine, because it's behind the counter. Out on the cough-and-cold rack, all I could get my hands on was a card bearing a picture of the drug—the restaurant scene in Brazil comes to mind—then go beg for a box from the pharmacist's clerk, who was already working a line of four people with real ailments and, of course, lots of questions and out-of-town checks.

So I stood clutching my little vinyl graphic rendering of an actual PSE package, nasal passages drizzling in anticipation of a month's worth of free breathing. But the next obstacle after the wait-time was, they couldn't sell me more than one package of 24—exactly 3½-weeks' supply. So I would have to return—after what, a day? week? two weeks?—for more.

Then, before I could get my hands on even one of the precious tablets, I had to sign a page of legalese which boils down to, "I promise not to go home and cook up little rocks of meth to trade for sex with truck-stop prostitutes."

Finally, I handed over my driver's license, then paid for my ostensibly over-the-counter drug on the spot, which—have the retail geniuses at Bentonville factored this in?—further delayed anyone behind me needing a real prescription.

Bag in hand, I ran screaming through the store to Squeeky, who was filling her cart in the grocery department. I begged her to buy a second blister pack for me, promising to mow the lawn, paint her toenails, iron her socks—anything to save me from coming back to this horrible place in less than a month.

she took her own credit card to the pharmacy while I pretended not to know her and hid, out of camera range, in the toy section. We had arranged a rendezvous on opposite sides of the kids' bicycle rack.

"Are you enjoying your visit to Wal-Mart?" I asked, with a lilting French accent, pretending to study tire treads.

"Ouí," she replied. "But zee, how you say, pharmacees is out to lunch."

"Horreurs!" I announced. "Zees will not deux!" I stormed out to the car in a Gallic sulk.

Twenty minutes later, Squeeky emerged into the warm afternoon with a little white bag, which I felt strangely compelled to trade sex for.

It must have been the accent.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 734 words, total size 5 kb.