Why do they make it so hard?

I hate "Crystal Meth". No I have never tried it. Probably never will. I don't hate it because of the crime it causes (raising my taxes). The crime does irk me, concerns me, but hate is a strong word. The destruction that it causes to lives of users and the lives of the families of users is very sad, even tragic. But it never stared me in the face so I had not developed a hatred for it...Until today.

I have a head cold. I have had it for about a week and a half. I have tried a number of regular off the shelf decongestants with no real luck. I was reminded in my BNI networking meeting this morning that "the good stuff is behind the counter". See that is where the Meth comes in. Some genius one day decided to mix Sudafed, chloroform, battery acid a God knows what else, to get high. As a result anything with Sudaphedrine is now behind the prescription counter.

SO to try and buy it today here is the process I went through at my "Friendly Neighborhood Walgreens"...

1. Go to the aisle and pick-up a card of the product you want. It has a picture of the box and all the drug info on the back. I carefully compared all the cards and chose the product that best matched my symptoms. (easy enough)

2. Go to the prescription counter, stand in line with Grandpa who can't stand still without his restless leg medication and little Johnny who is eating some Skittles and hasn't had his Ritalin for about a week (kid put down the whiffle ball bat).

3. Get to the front of the line, hand over your ID, which the pharmacy tech takes about 5 minutes to enter. Wouldn't have been that bad if the people that slid into line behind me thought they would make the line look shorter by nestling right up onto my back. I thought it might be little Johnny wanting a piggy-back ride. (People, if you are in line, draw an imaginary line about three feet around the nearest people in line and respect the space. Sorry my pet peeve rant of the day)

4. Have the pharmacy tech go to get the medicine that I so carefully chose and come back with "all they have", which of course not the medicine that you brought the card over for. (Why do they have the card if there is no medicine). So I decide to get "what they have", because if I stood there any longer I might have actually pinpointed what the person had for lunch (by the smell of her breath, I am pretty sure it contained Spam).

5. My next statement is " I have some more shopping to do, can I pay for it up front", was met with an emphatic "NO". So I paid, looked for an opening to escape the 3 space infringers behind me and headed to the photo counter (25 minutes later, I actually got my photos...Perhaps another story, for another time).

So that is the basis for my new found hatred for Meth. It cost me 25 minutes of my life that I will never get back. Maybe petty, maybe cranky, it may even go against my previous getting younger post (am I becoming a cranky old man?), but I have a head cold and I just wasn't in the mood. Hopefully the "good stuff" kicks in and tomorrow I will be laid back once again.