Did you know that you do not need prescriptions for the majority of medicines in Puerto Rico? I believe the only drugs that you have to have a prescription for is ‘scheduled drugs‘. It took me almost a year of living in PR to discover this.

Late one Friday, I had thrown my neck out and couldn’t move it to one side. Saturday I had a scuba dive scheduled and had already paid for a boat trip to St. Thomas. I told my girlfriend that we were going to have to cancel. She said “I’ll get you something for it.” I told her “It’s not like we can just go get some aspirin to fix it.” She explained not to worry. We then drove up to a mom and pop pharmacy that was next to a doctors office. We then walked up and talked to the pharmacist and my girlfriend spouts something off in Spanish. She then repeated back a list of high end muscle relaxers. I told her one that I had been prescribed before and a few minutes later I had enough to last me the weekend. As I waited in the checkout line I noticed a price list of a few painkillers, muscle relaxers, and anti anxiety medications posted on the wall.

Later she explained that your big commercial pharmacies such as Walgreens or El Amal (the local big pharmacy) won’t sell them to you because they are in some sort of network and they can’t. I sort of think it is just store policy though…?

The problem with buying medication like this is insurance won’t cover them. You have to have a prescription from the doctor to be covered, so it could get pretty costly. I also don’t know if they would allow you to load up on the medicine either. They might just allow you to get a few days worth. Then again, you could just keep going to different pharmacies to abuse meds if you wanted.

If you’re not abusing the system, it actually makes sense to allow you to buy medications. Most people know what is wrong with them and they know their bodies. I knew for a fact what was wrong with my neck. It happens frequently to me and I have to go to the doctor to waste my money and my time to have him tell me to take some muscle relaxers and put a heating pad on my neck. This way I saved time and money. The amount of pills that it took to fix my problem cost less than the copay for the doc and medication.