PSA: What to do with Expired Medication

This year I will be thirty-five (face-palm) and for all of my adult life I have been lugging around, with every move I've made, all my expired medications. I didn't know what to do with them. I knew I shouldn't just throw it away. I had been told it shouldn't go to the landfill or be flushed and end up in our water supply - so I had that knowledge but I didn't know what to do with them.

As you can imagine now almost being married for ten years and with a toddler I had my fair share (um that should read massive quantity) of expired prescription and over the counter medication just sitting around. Now that my daughter is very much on the move I began to panic that I had to get all the medicine out of the house and all the good medicine safely out of reach. I had heard and read about public events from med drop off but I had never been able to make the dates or times and they only seem to happen once a year or so. I thought I could take it possibly to the pharmacy but if I'm honest I was so overwhelmed and somewhat embarrassed by my unsightly stash of meds that I didn't really want to haul it all to my local Walgreens. But out of desperation I gave them a call... which is how I found out about my cities local disposal program.  WHAT!

I could just take my expired meds to a drop box at my local police station and drop them in. Seriously?!?  So I decided to be brave and I loaded up a huge canvas tote full of the meds and off I went to find out whether this was too good to be true. Lo and behold there is was a drop box right in the lobby. I literally dropped years of old medications into that box and I felt liberated.  So I started thinking how many other people might not know about this. I did some googling and it seems most cities (at least around my area of the DFW, TX metroplex) have similar programs.

Here are a few links for those that want more information:

Flower Mound, TX

Lewisville, TX

Carrollton, TX

Highland Village, TX

Note: Before using any of these programs, remember all medicines need to be in their original container and all personal information blacked out or removed!

More googling and I found out that Richardson, TX (the city I mostly grew up in) doesn't have an ongoing take back program. Which might explain why I never knew about this. Shame Richardson... get on it. :)

Also, to be fair I did find out that some local pharmacies do take back medicines and CVS has a program but you have to pay like $2.99 for shipping or something.  

So I haven't blogged in quite a while, maybe I'll get back to it. But for now this is my PSA post. Hope it informs at least someone who was as clueless as I was and helps you feel as liberated as I did. Wish I had taken some photos of the adventure but it didn't dawn on me until later that perhaps I should share this new found knowledge.