CVS + C4 = sanity.

I really think it’s that simple. That or exnay on the ee4say and start taking Xanax before going to pick up my prescriptions from the CVS on Tennyson Parkway in Plano. It’s far less invasive, well for the employees at that CVS anyhow. I imagine it being me just really jacked up on Xanax and not caring a lick about how their pharmacist even graduated grade school.

In my head, I most closely compare that Xanax effect to the euphoric experience I had when I was in the hospital years ago, thinking I was dying. I truly thought my appendix had burst at the time and essentially beelined to the hospital. In the end, it was not appendicitis. I’ll spare you the details of what I was diagnosed with, but let me put it to you like this, I would have rather had a surgery to have the old appendix removed over what the real deal was. I’m still hanging out on the ass end of God’s little sense of humor; punchline Angela.

But while I was in the hospital, the pain was so horrifically unbearable that they eventually gave me an injection of Demerol. And my God! I floated about 7 feet off the bed. In that moment, I was fairly sure my shit still hurt, but the one thing I did know was that I could have given a shit less about that pain for the next 4-hours. The only thing I said was – I can see why people get addicted to this. That was the last narcotic pain killer the hospital would approve. It’s like dude, relax. I’m jacked up on a synthetic opioid. I thought I saw a rainbow colored elephant run backwards down the hall of the hospital singing It's a Small World Afterall (which true story I did think I saw it and talked about it according to my mom for the better part of an hour – I have limited recollection of that event). So does that mean you’re going to have me committed? Geez, unclench. It’s not like I had a tourniquet around my upper arm slapping the inside of my elbow looking for a good vein. I merely made an observation and the damn opiate you gave me disintegrated my ability to only think things like that – I had to say everything. I actually think the Demerol immobilized the part of your brain where you go through the process of thinking it to saying it. I was going straight to saying it. Shit. Sue me.

Anyhow, ideally that’s how I would like for my Xanax regimen to work. I take it, wait 30minutes for it to kick on in and then head over to the pharmacy. (That’s a really ironic sentence, now that I reread it.) By the time I get there, I wouldn’t physically be able to care about how stupid all these people are. Let me put it to you like this – the idea that I have to go to that pharmacy to pick up a prescription starts to piss me off hours before I actually go and pick them up.


I have a prescription for an ADD medication that I get every month. This drug falls into the Class-II Controlled Substance category.

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Classification of Controlled Drugs – Classes (also called Schedules)

Class-I: Substances presenting a high risk of abuse, posing a particularly, serious threat to public health which are of very little or no therapeutic value.
EX: Morphine, LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy), Mescaline (Peyote), Psilocybin (hallucinogenic), and Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC; AKA active ingredient in cannabis).

Class-II: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a serious threat to public health which are of low or moderate therapeutic value.
EX: Amphetamines and amphetamine-type stimulants – EX. Adderol, Ritalin, etc.

Class-III: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a serious threat to public health which are of moderate or high therapeutic value.
EX: Barbiturates (sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties) – EX. Amobarbital (“truth serum”), Buprenorphine (semi-synthetic opiate), Ketamine, Hydrocodone / Codeine, and Anabolic Steroids.

Class-IV: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a minor threat to public health with a high therapeutic value.
EX: Tranquillizers, Analgesics, and some Narcotics – Diazepam (Valium), Lorazepam (Ativan), Phenobarbital (Luminal), Temazepam (Restoril) and Alprazolam (Xanax).

Class-V: Substances presenting a very low risk of abuse, posing a no threat to public health with an extremely high therapeutic value. Medications deemed non-habit forming by the FDA.

Class-VI: Over-the-counter medications needing no real FDA regulations. This has since changed with the manufacturing of Methamphetamine by using over-the-counter amphetamines (i.e. Sudafed). The FDA has made it illegal to purchase over-the-counter medications in mass-quantities by a federal program that monitors their sales in relation to a person specific.
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Now given that the prescription that I pick up monthly is highly regulated, there are several steps that have to be taken in order for the prescription to be valid – all the way down to the pharmacy level. The prescription has to be written on a specific and special type of prescription pad – one that is highly improbable of being forged. Not all doctors can prescribe CII narcotics. They are registered and supervised by the FDA and the doctors who are certified to prescribe CII narcotics are held to a higher standard of repercussion if they are found to be promoting the improper use of any CII narcotic prescribed. Once a prescription is written, it is only valid for 7 days from the date that the prescription is written. If you attempt to fill it on day 8, it will be rejected at the pharmacy-level and you will have to go back to the original prescribing doctor to request another prescription – which begins a whole different process of steps to rectify the prescription that is now invalid.

I say all that to say that you’d think that the pharmacy would be on heightened alert when filling a CII prescription. Well, not my CVS. I am prescribed a quantity of 60 15mg extended release capsules. The directions are to read as follows: Take 2 capsules every morning. This means that 60 capsules should last me exactly 30 days, right? Right. I take my prescription in to the pharmacy and wait an ungodly amount of time for them to fill it. When they call my name and I go up to retrieve my prescription I notice that my co-pay is $20 instead of the usual $10. I chalked it up to my insurance plan changing, paid it and went on my way.

Now it should be said that I don’t take my ADD meds every day. Sometimes, if I don’t need them on the weekends, I won’t take them or if I wake up later than 7am, the meds can keep me up at night so again, I won’t take them. My prescription for 30 days generally lasts me somewhere around 40 to 45 days.

The next month, I go in to the pharmacy to drop off that month’s prescription for my ADD meds. As the pharmacy tech types in the prescription, she says to me – Oh, it looks like this is a refill too soon on the insurance and they won’t cover it for another 15 days. Whhhat?! No way! I am well over the 30 days and actually I’m closer to 45 days since I last got this prescription filled. Why the hell won’t the insurance cover this for another 15 days? Something is wrong because I am almost out and I need this filled! While she flitters all over the pharmacy trying to figure out what happened asking me things like – has your insurance changed and did the dosing on this prescription change? I have one unified response to all her questions – NO.

It’s about 20minutes later that the tiny Asian pharmacist (AKA the future bane of my existence) comes up and says – Oh, I know what happened. Here I’ll fix it, no problem. Ok, finally… someone who knows what they are doing! Somewhere around 30minutes after that, they call me back to the pharmacy and my prescription is ready to go and it was run through and covered on insurance. Sweet! The girl goes to ring me up and the total comes to $10. It wasn’t until after I had paid for the meds that I stopped and was like wait… whhhat? Last month it cost me $20 – what the hell? It was in that exact moment that I realized what had happened to my prescription last month. Instead of typing into the system that the 60 capsules were good for 30 days, they had typed the directions in for 1 capsule a day meaning that 60 caps should have lasted me 60 days – THUS last month I was charged 2 co-pays by my insurance equaling $20. So I tell the girl that they over charged me last month and that I wanted this prescription for free since I paid double. She stands there and looks at me like she is about to hit the highest mode of crisis and doesn’t know what to do. So I lean over the counter and call over the pharmacist to resolve this. After I waited and stared at her for another 10minutes while she pretended not to hear me and acted super busy, she came over. It was at this point that my hatred for her was birthed.

She comes over and says – yes, how can I help you (like she’d never met me before)? I tell her the same thing I tell the girl who was ringing me up. The pharmacist looks at me like she has NO idea as to what I am talking about. This situation has officially pissed me off. A line of people has now formed behind me waiting for me to get done so they can get their prescriptions. The pharmacist acts like she is confused by what I am asking from her no matter how many ways I explain it. It got to the point that I demanded she pull the prescription from last month as well as a print out of what the directions were on the meds they gave me. This little demand is about to prove me right and make her look like an ass, given that she supposedly “knew exactly what was wrong and was fixing it”. This bitch knew exactly what I was talking about and the truth as to why she was acting so dumb was about to come out.

As the girl ringing me up heads back to find the hard-copy of my prescription, the pharmacist says – that won’t be necessary. AH! HA! Got you. She then says that they processed the prescription with the improper directions through the insurance company over 30days and they could not reverse the claim in the system. It was too late for them to correct the error via the insurance company. First of all, I worked in the pharmacy for 3years, so I knew what she was saying was complete bullshit. They could recover it, but they would have to go through a process in order to do so. This lazy bitch wasn’t going to give me back what I had overpaid; instead she wasn’t going to tell me what really happened and just have me pay for my prescription again. Ohhh, bullshit!

After bickering with her for another 10-15 minutes about how she WAS going to give me my $10 back with her telling me there was no possible way to do that – she tells me she won’t refund my prescription for that month but will put a $10 credit in the system for next month. Which again, I worked in the pharmacy and I knew the system wasn’t capable of that little offer she suggested but I was tired of arguing with her and accepted it. It’s not like I would forget about it anyhow.

Xanax: 1
Self-Control: 0

I’d gone into the pharmacy several times before I’d actually remember to request the $10 credit. I’d had it out with the same stupid pharmacist more than 3x; once when I had burned my hand and I asked her what was the best thing to put on it and she told me and I quote – there’s a whole aisle devoted to analgesics over there (and pointed to nowhere in particular). To which I responded with something like – well shit, a monkey could do your job if that’s what your graduate degree qualifies you to give as a recommendation. It was almost like when she saw me come in, she was immediately annoyed. Feeling’s mutual bitch.

Xanax: 4
Self-Control: 0

About the 4th time I was in there since they overcharged me, I was picking up a prescription and I told the girl ringing me up that I should have a $10 credit on my account that I would like to use it. She looks in the system and as predicted, there was nothing noted about my $10 over-pay. The freaking bitch of a pharmacist was there that day (it seems like SHE’S ALWAYS there) and the girl calls her over to ask about this “supposed” $10 credit I was saying I had on file. The pharmacist comes over and I swear to God looks at me like she has NO idea who I am and says – how can I help you? I tell her I want to collect on my $10 credit. She goes to the computer and looks in the system to turn around and say – I’m sorry, I don’t see anything in the system that says you should have a $10 credit.

Is this bitch for real? She knows exactly who I am and what I am talking about. I’m irate. I start to not-so-politely remind her how’d she’d screwed me over a couple months before and wasn’t even planning on telling me about it. She just stood there listening to me saying the occasional – I don’t know what you are talking about – bullshit; that was until I used the phrase – Insurance Fraud.

She immediately put up her hands shaking them from side-to-side saying something like – don’t worry about it… I will take care of this for you… I will do you a favor even though there’s no record of this being true. Like she had to get just one more dig in there before she did ME a favor.

So I responded with – doing ME a favor? Oh no, no, no princess. It is I who is doing YOU a favor by not reporting you to the FDA for insurance fraud among other things. YOU aren’t doing ME any favors. As a matter of fact wasn’t it you screwed up my prescription in the first place? THEN you lied to me about it? THEN you didn’t want to reimburse me for your error because you supposedly couldn’t get it back from the insurance company which PS sweetie, we both know you could have and were too lazy to do it – instead you would have rather screwed me over so you didn’t actually have to work. YOU do ME a favor? Laughable. I suggest you get me reimbursed immediately before I Google the FDA’s phone number while I am standing in front of your Pharmacists license number. What do you think about that? Who’s doing who a favor? (Which she was stunned with silence so I finished up with) – RIGHT, I’m doing YOU the favor and you’ll do well to remember that in the future.

Yeah, my prescription was free that day.
Xanax: 5
Self-Control: 0

The ridiculousness isn’t just reserved for the pharmacist. The staff is just as incompetent and could have only been trained by the ignorance that is their primary pharmacist whose general practice is NOT customer service.

First off, I’d like to say that following HIPPA regulations means verifying you are who you say you are so that your prescription isn’t sold improperly and so that unauthorized people aren’t picking things up that they aren’t supposed to be. This does not mean that the person ringing you up asks you if – 123 Street is your address. You are supposed to ask me for 3 forms of identification… birth date, address and the medication I am supposed to be picking up and I am supposed to answer you. On the rare occasion they even try to verify who you are, they never do it properly.

Xanax: 6
Self-Control: 0

Second, I can’t tell you how many times I have been sold the wrong prescription. You know, on the more common occurrences that they don’t verify who I am. Then they act like I was the one who was in the wrong for taking the damn prescription in the 1st place.

Xanax: 7
Self Control: 0

Third, the drive through is damn ridiculous. The clerks will allow someone to sit at the window for over an hour. Again, OVER AN HOUR. The thought of asking them to pull around or come inside since it’s something that will take more than a few minutes to fix has never once crossed the minds of these employees. This results in people backing out of the drive-thru line and going inside only to be met with a line of, on average, 8 people who most likely were at one point or another in line because they were sitting in the drive-thru for an unconscionable amount of time.

Xanax: 8
Self-Control: 0

One time a gal in front of me in line, who had originally been behind me in the drive-thru line, told me how pissed she was at what was going on. Naturally when she finally made it to the counter, there was a problem with her prescription – at the fault of the bitch pharmacist, of course. After she got her situation rectified and as she walked past me, she said – good luck. After I had been in the drive-thru for 45 minutes and waited inside for another 20, I gave my name to the clerk who rang me up and I was on my way out the door. As I was walking out, I saw the gal that was in front of me walking back in, looking more pissed off than before. She muttered something like stupid pharmacy STILL gave me the wrong thing as she walked with purpose back to the pharmacy. I shook my head thinking – well that figures. And before I got to my car, I thought – you know, I better check to see if my prescription is right. I slid my hand down the bag to be met with a prescription bottle. I wasn’t supposed to have a bottle; I was supposed to have a packet of pills. WTF?! I look down at the name and said Angela Williams. I look at prescription name and it’s not even something I get or would have on file there. I look at the address… Carrollton. Dude… they sold me the wrong prescription and she didn’t even ask me to verify who I am – no wonder I got the wrong thing! You have to be EFFIN kidding me. I turn right around, pass by the window with the gal I knew quite well by this point who was yelling at the pharmacist and went straight to the girl who rang me up. There was now a line of 12 people. I’m not kidding. 12. I counted. I demanded to go in front of them as I said loudly – SHE SOLD ME THE WRONG PRESCRIPTION.

She was flustered, but then found the correct prescription and checked me out immediately. I stopped by the pharmacist who was still being bitched out by the other gal and said – excuse me, but I want to make sure that you report this medication leaving the pharmacy improperly to HIPPA. I will be checking in with them to 1 report it myself and 2 make sure you did. I hope that you prioritize that as I am sure Angela Williams in Carrollton would not be too pleased to find out that one of her meds left the pharmacy improperly.

Xanax: 9
Self-Control: 0

I could honestly go on-and-on with example after example of how this place is like the 7th circle of hell. There isn’t one person that you will run into in line that is not seriously aggravated with this place. Believe me, I have stood in line there enough times that I have made friends and traded war stories with other patrons. It stresses me out. I think partially because I worked in a pharmacy and was a certified tech for 3 years. It’s not that damn difficult, but every time you go in there, they act like you guessed their name to be Rumpelstiltskin and are there to collect their 1st born.

I have often texted my friends from CVS talking about how I hope I never come in contact with C4 because I plan on leveling the damn place. Someone once suggested a sniper attack, but you know I’m not that good of a shot and I want to make sure and take them ALL down before I get caught. Well that or get on Xanax. I’m still on the fence.