How to Stock up on Antibiotics without a Prescription

Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only.

Be certain to consult a medical professional before attempting any of the information herein.

What we nowadays take for granted, could become life-threatening in a collapse type situation.

For example, a good friend of mine got a simple scratch from his cat which developed into sepsis. Because he was able to get to a doctors and be treated with antibiotics nothing really happened but the thought came to him, if he didn’t have access to modern medicine, he probably would not be here right now.

For that reason, it is extremely important that you have a good stockpile of medication put away for a future time — antibiotics being one of the most important.

The problem is, it’s not very easy for the common layman to gather a good supply of antibiotics (or other medicines for that matter) without knowing an understanding doctor or being one yourself.

However, at least when it comes to antibiotics, there is a way around it. And that’s through…

Stockpiling Aquatic Antibiotics

What many new preppers don’t realize is that the fish antibiotics they commonly sell over the counter in pet or aquatic-pet stores is the exact drug found in antibiotics that you’d purchase through your pharmacist with a prescription at often 10x the cost.

Don’t believe me?

Well, there’s a simple test to determine what the ingredients of a drug are by the label that appears on the outside. To do that, all you need to do is head on over to http://www.drugs.com/imprints.php and put the details of the pill/tablet in question.

Here’s an example of the commonly sold “Fish Mox” you’d find at your local big-chain pet store:

Taking one of them out and you’ll find the following data printed on each of the red/pink pills:

Putting in the pill you can see that the results I come up are that are not some crazy special drug that is exclusive for fish but they’re nothing but 500mg of pure amoxicillin:

How to Use Fish Antibiotics in a Collapse Situation

Since I am no means an expert when it comes to pharmaceuticals and their use I’m going to defer this to two people that I highly respect in the prepper community that are also very knowledgeable when it comes to modern medicine. They are Dr. Bones (MD) and Nurse Amy.

If you haven’t yet heard of them you definitely need to listen to their show as well as buy their excellent book:

To learn how to use the various fish antibiotics, check out these great articles:

• How to Use Fish Mox (To treat your sick fish of course)
• Fish Antibiotics in a Collapse
• Antibiotics And Their Use in Collapse Medicine Part 1
• Antibiotics And Their Use in Collapse Medicine Part 2
• Antibiotics And Their Use in Collapse Medicine Part 3
• Antibiotics And Their Use in Collapse Medicine Part 4

Where to Purchase Fish Antibiotics

If you’re looking to purchase some aquatic antibiotics there are a number of places you can get them, such as most pet stores that sell common aquatic supplies.

If you’d rather purchase it online I would recommend going to one of my sponsors CampingSurvival.com. There you can pick up the whole gamut of fish antibiotics at some great prices. The antibiotics they have available there are:

• Amoxicillin
• Ampicillin
• Cephalexin
• Ciprofloxacin
• Penicillin
• Doxycycline
• Clindamycin
• Erythromycin

How Long Can I Store Aquatic Antibiotics?

Although the expiration date listed on the packaging is typically about a year, recent studies have shown that expiration dates last much longer than that.

For example, in the respected medical journal “the archives of internal medicine” the following article was a breakthrough finding for preppers:

October 8, 2012 — An analysis of 8 medications indicates that most of the active ingredients they contain were present in adequate amounts decades after the drugs’ expiration dates, according to results from a study published online October 8 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Lee Cantrell, PharmD, from the California Poison Control System, San Diego Division, University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy, and colleagues used liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry to measure the amounts of the active ingredients in the medications. The medicines, which had expired 28 to 40 years ago, were found in a retail pharmacy in their original, unopened packaging.

To meet US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards, an active ingredient must be present in 90% to 110% of the amount indicated on the label. Drug expiration dates are set for 12 to 60 months after production, even though many compounds can persist far longer.

In the new analysis, 12 of the 14 active ingredients persisted in concentrations that were 90% or greater of the amount indicated on the label. These 12 compounds retained their full potency for 336 months (28 years) or longer. Eight of them retained potency for at least 480 months (40 years). Dr. Cantrell’s team was unable to find a standard for homatropine, 1 of the 15 ingredients.

Only aspirin and amphetamine fell below the 90% cutoff. Phenacetin was present at greater than the cutoff in Fiorinal (butalbital, aspirin, caffeine, and codeine phosphate, but was considerably less in Codempiral No. 3. The authors attribute the deficit in Codempiral to conditions that led to preferential degradation of phenacetin because of its amide group, compared with codeine, which is also in Codempiral but is more chemically stable.

Three compounds persisted in greater than 110% of the labeled contents: methaqualone (in Somnafac), meprobamate (in Bamadex), and pentobarbital (in Nebralin). These relatively high amounts may reflect degradation of other components of the compounded drug, the fact that the samples were produced before FDA-instituted quality control measures in 1963, or inconsistencies of the analytical techniques between when the drugs were compounded and now. The new findings are consistent with the efforts of the Shelf-Life Extension Program, which has extended the expiration dates on 88% of 122 drugs tested so far. Extensions range from 66 to 278 months.

“Our results support the effectiveness of broadly extending expiration dates for many drugs,” the researchers conclude. They also point out that extending shelf life can significantly lower costs to consumers.

Limitations of the analysis, the investigators write, include an inability to confirm the storage conditions of the drug samples, as well as imprecise dating of the samples. The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1377417

In addition to the above study, there was another sponsored by the FDA in collaboration with the Department of Defense called the “SLEP” or Shelf Life Extension Program where they had tested a number of different drugs and have noticed that they far outlast the stated expiration dates on the packaging.

You can read that study here.

Now keep in mind that these test were done on medications that are in pill or tablet form. This does not apply to liquid medications which will lose potency far sooner than the pill or tablet form.