A Trans Rant: Needle Disposal

I have a bone to pick with a pharmacy chain that shall not be named for liability reasons

This pharmacy chain has been a monthly pain in my ass since I started taking Testosterone. I’ve written about my experiences there before. It was often difficult to pick up my prescription without getting outed in an embarrassing way in front of a bunch of strangers in line. It was bad enough to have to deal with my deadname and misgendering, without getting loudly asked if I was really sure I wasn’t pregnant, in front of everyone.

To add to the hassle, there was the theater of being made to provide my ID, with more or less commentary from pharmacists about prevention of drug addiction by keeping an extra record of my information on file. I’m clearly a dangerous man who needs to be watched. No one knows what I might do with this prescription. First, I want needles to inject my Testosterone as instructed by my doctor. Next, I might start a really immature crime ring to celebrate my second puberty. Surely, this is the logical fallout of growing a patchy beard.

They would always make a show of writing my license number down on a blank sheet of paper. I guess they weren’t serious enough about fighting the War on Drugs to type my ID number into some kind of established directory or even to write it on some kind of official looking form. A printed excel spreadsheet shows commitment. I guess a blank sheet of paper was for the most heinous of offenders. The top ten most wanted criminals of this pharmacy are probably listed on the back of a receipt somewhere. On days when I looked especially suspicious, they’d dig up a lined notepad for me.

Once we got through that part of the process, they would almost always try to withhold needles, citing laws that didn’t exist. Once I got a pharmacist to acknowledge that it was legal to purchase needles to accompany the prescription, it wasn’t uncommon for them to give me the wrong sizes and refuse to exchange them. Then, it would become the next pharmacy’s problem.

In one unexpected out-of-town trip for a family emergency, we even had to visit a harm reduction center for drug addicts just to get the needles needed because local pharmacies didn’t want to deal with an out-of-state prescription on short notice. Though Google had assured us that needle purchases in that state were legal, local pharmacists weren’t so sure and weren’t about to risk helping us with needles for the medication. I always wondered if people with diabetes went through the same thing, or if this had more to do with personal opinions about transgender patients.

With all of these experiences, I was reluctant to talk to any pharmacists about needle disposal. My doctor had recommended that I use a water bottle as a cheap sharp’s container, assuring me that any pharmacy would help me to dispose of medical waste responsibly. Since we lived alone, it was easy to put off this chore. I stored the bottles in a safe place and forgot about them after each injection, when I should have long since worked up the courage to ask a pharmacist for help getting rid of them. By the time we moved, I had quite a collection of used needles.

I knew we couldn’t have such a thing with us on a plane. Bottles full of used needles would look pretty suspicious even in checked luggage. We ultimately decided to drive, in large part because I was nervous about the difficult to replace medicine somehow getting confiscated. Though it was legal to have the medicine with me, provided that I could show the prescription, I had lots of experience with laws being ignored by people in gatekeeping positions. I couldn’t exactly stop a TSA agent to grab a lawyer, any more than I could do so with a pharmacist. With a TSA agent on a power trip, the consequences could be much more serious.

Even on a long car ride, I was nervous about carrying that many used needles. We had once had our car thoroughly searched by a cop who pulled us over in broad daylight for a routine traffic stop near Topsail Beach in North Carolina. The officer took one look at my wife, who had been driving 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, but had done nothing else wrong, and introduced himself by asking if we had any weapons in the car. Disclosing the existence of an EMT knife for emergencies served as probable cause. This is the sort of thing that an interracial married couple needs to be prepared for when driving across country. It’s not advisable to have a bunch of sharp objects in the car for no reason.

There was no question about it. I had to get rid of those needles. It was time to ask an unfriendly pharmacist a very awkward question. I chose the drive-through pharmacy option for privacy.

“Hi, I fill my prescription here every month. My name is [Logan Silkwood] and my prescription number is ______. Do you have hazardous waste disposal for the needles that I’ve used? Or if not, do you know where I might safely get rid of all of these?”

I held up one of the bottles full of needles. The pharmacist visibly flinched. She said that she could get rid of excess pills, but that they of course couldn’t do that for needles. The only way was to go to the police station and hand it to them for safe disposal.

Fuck that. This was a place that had my prescription records on file and the staff was still treating me like an illegal drug addict. What would a police officer who had no such record think of me? The whole point of getting rid of the prescription needles there was to prevent that conversation with law enforcement.

I found a safer way to get rid of the needles in the end. That said, I wanted to give this pharmacy a small passive aggressive reminder that this should have been their problem. Making it difficult for someone to responsibly dispose of needles, when one’s job is to facilitate safe exchange of medicine, is not okay. Giving the sort of advice that could get a trans person arrested for no reason is inexcusable. It turned out that I had a lot of things to throw away before we could move. Donation centers won’t accept things that aren’t in reasonably good condition, and recycling centers won’t accept everything.

I knew I should just go to a local dump. That was the right thing to do. On the other hand, it was so tempting to just visit the dumpster behind that pharmacy and fill it to the brim with trash as a farewell gift. I can neither confirm nor deny that such a thing happened. Had I done such a thing, though, the timing would have been perfect, as the trash had just been taken out for the week. I’m sure that would have been really inconvenient.

What would you have done in my place? Would you have taken the high road or the lower one? Would you have spread bird seed and honey droplets all over the pharmacy parking lot at 4am while laughing like a Disney villain? Or would you have been a forgiving soul who dreamed of their edification? Feel free to share your fantasies of pettiness and passive aggressive vengeance pranks. It’s therapeutic to have evil thoughts every now and then.

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