Prescription sleeping pills are a concern for many governments. Insomnia is a fairly common condition these days. However, chemical treatments are not always the first solution that physicians turn to. Most doctors encourage their patients to make behavioral changes that include sleeping on time and exercising regularly.
Doctors only prescribe sleeping pills when natural solutions fail. These medical professionals approach sleeping pills cautiously because they are associated with several risks. Unfortunately, patients are rarely this cautious.
Many of them are quick to solve sleeping ailments by taking sleeping pills. The internet shares a lot of the blame for the consequences that have sprouted from this pattern. Online stores have become so prominent that anyone can purchase prescription sleeping pills regardless of whether or not they have a valid prescription from a doctor.
By taking their doctor out of the equation, these insomnia patients have exposed themselves to dangers that their home governments have tried and failed to protect them from.
Why Online Purchases of Prescription Sleeping Pills Are So Dangerous
People buy prescription sleeping pills from the internet all the time but why is that a problem? The following factors and considerations will elucidate the issue:
OTC
First of all, it is worth mentioning that over-the-counter sleeping medicine doesn’t attract as much attention as prescription sleeping pills. Most of the warnings that people find in online pharmacy reviews are primarily concerned with prescription pills.
You don’t have to use an internet pharmacy to buy over-the-counter drugs. You can find those in any traditional pharmacy. Naturally, patients are still encouraged to consult a doctor before they buy OTC medication. But the government isn’t particularly concerned by the number of people purchasing OTC medicine from the internet.
Prescription Pills
People are more likely to buy prescription drugs for insomnia from the internet because most of the online shops that sell these products do not require a prescription. You can buy as many pills as you want regardless of whether or not you have consulted a medical professional.
This is a problem because it encourages people to self-medicate. Insomnia patients can treat their own conditions without relying on the expertise of a doctor. This is the reason why the health authorities in many countries encourage people to avoid websites that do not ask for prescriptions.
Drugstores, both traditional and online, are mandated by the law to demand valid prescriptions before they dispense medicine. Any shop that doesn’t ask for prescriptions is a scam. You would expect people to respond to this information by avoiding all the entities on the internet that sell drugs without prescriptions.
But the opposite keeps happening. People are flocking to shady sites specifically because they do not ask for prescriptions. They like the idea of removing doctors from the healthcare process.
Addiction
Governments hate the idea of people buying prescription pills from the internet because some of them are addictive. One example is zopiclone. While doctors prescribe it to patients all the time, they do not encourage anyone to use it for more than four weeks because they know that it can generate addictions.
Their prescriptions are designed to prevent this outcome. However, doctors cannot exercise such influence where online purchases are concerned. Investigations have found that some websites are willing to sell a whopping 2000 tablets of the drug to patients in one go.
Some of them warn their patients about the addictive risks of the drugs. But others do not. This makes internet purchases of prescription sleeping pills very dangerous.
Side Effects
Addiction isn’t the only side effect that can come from the consumption of prescription pills that were purchased without a prescription. These drugs can produce all manner of reactions, including headaches, memory problems, lethargy, organ damage, and so much more.
These side effects are more likely to happen because internet purchases remove doctors from the equation. Your doctor knows your medical history. For that reason, you can trust them to identify a prescription sleeping pill that will combat your insomnia without producing devastating allergic reactions. Buying sleeping pills directly from an online retailer bypasses the physician, and this places your health in jeopardy.
Oversight
Governments keep discouraging consumers from making online purchases because many of the dispensaries on the internet are operating without oversight. The authorities cannot hold them accountable for selling counterfeit pills, and neither can they prevent them from swindling their consumers. The organizations in question operate outside the law.
Various government bodies have successfully removed hundreds of medical scams from the internet over the years. But the number of scams that are still in operation is far too high. Online pharmacy reviews have done what they can to highlight all the bad seeds in the business.
But you cannot always trust them. Scams have found ways of producing fake positive ratings and reviews. It takes a lot of time to separate the genuine pharmacies from their fraudulent counterparts, time that most people do not have.
This is why the government wants consumers to steer clear of internet pharmacies altogether. But that won’t happen. The entities are far too convenient. It doesn’t help matters that their prices are so low. For some people, the risks are worth the benefits.
Conclusion
Prescription sleeping pills are a problem. They are addictive. If that wasn’t bad enough, they can produce deadly allergic reactions in insomnia patients. This is why their sale is heavily restricted. You need a prescription from a licensed doctor, but that is only if you want to buy your drugs from a traditional brick-and-mortar store.
You can buy prescription sleeping pills from most internet pharmacies without a valid prescription. But that only makes the dangers associated with these products more acute. People are more likely to self-medicate which, in turn, exposes them to risks like overdosing and addiction.
Doctors understand the dangers that sleeping pills pose. By taking them out of the picture, patients have left their health at the mercy of online scammers that do not care about their well-being.
Governments haven’t stopped cautioning people about the dangers of online purchases of sleeping pills. Unfortunately, for the moment, people are not listening.
