I once carried narcotics but gave it up. It’s too much
hassle.
For garden-variety pain, codeine, Vicodin et al are
sometimes but not always superior to over-the-counter pain medicines. I liked
them because hotel guests have usually tried ibuprofen, Advil, Motrin,
naproxen, etc. During the visit, I can hand over a few days of narcotics, and
the guest knows he’s getting something different.
Nowadays, when I determine during the phone call that
the guest only needs a pain medicine, I have nothing to offer, so I end up not
making the visit. Many guests don’t want to pay the housecall fee in exchange
for a prescription.
In an effort to fight the raging opioid epidemic, states
have passed laws to keep track of narcotics. Pharmacists now send a report to
the state for every narcotic prescription they fill. That’s easy because pharmacists
already record everything on their computer, so they merely hit an extra button
to send the report.
If I hand out a few narcotics, I must sit down at my
computer when I return home, find the reporting form, and fill it out. Some of
the questions seemed cryptic, so I worried that I wasn’t doing it correctly. It
seemed safer to stop handing them out.
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