Costco is now limiting loperamide purchase to one box.

I'm looking for a cheap alternative to Costco now. I'd like to buy a few years worth in case the DEA makes it really difficult to get loperamide like they did with Clariton D. 

If someone popped 100 pills of loperamide I would think they would end up having the worst case of constipation ever and be at risk of having going to the ER with fecal impaction. That may be the other problem if 100 pills get consumed for a high. 

Hey CTB, I think real deal addicts know how to work around those issues with stool softeners, etc.. It's an Art form to these folks. I believe street drugs like Heroin block you up really bad. It just sounds like the DEA is overreaching like they usually do. Let's stop one guy from ODing at the cost of screwing over millions of Americans. I was reading last year about junkies figuring out how to cook and inject the anti-depression drug Wellbutran. You can't stop junkies. I'd just rather see that policing money go into treatment instead of punishment methods like limiting immodium to the public. Who knows where it will go...

Are you talking about Imodium or Lomotil?

Immodium.  I get it there also.  It's the Kirkland brand.  Super cheap.  So now if I want to get an extra box for my sister, I guess I can't.  

Lomotil has always been pretty tightly controlled.

Loperamide is Lomotil and it’s always been in prescription form. If you’re talking about Imodium they sell it all over. 

Actually Lomotil is diphenoxylate (plus a bit of atropine to discourage overuse), not loperamide. As folks upthread are saying, loperamide is Imodium. If loperamide purchases are being broadly curtailed, that will be a nuisance for many of us. I don't think it will prevent folks from getting what they need, but it might prevent stocking up, and add some extra trips to the pharmacy. I don't think there's much reason for panic buying or excessive stockpiling, since there's no reason to expect true shortages.

Thank you Scott. 

In the big scheme of things it just creates another annoying life inconvenience. I'll be able to get immodium prescriptions worst-case unless I end up without health insurance. If the DEA has moved on it with Costco there will be more to come in the future. 

Janpiep, it turns out if you blend 100, 2mg immodium pills in a milk shake you can get high similar to a methadone high (drug used to kick heroin). Currently the underground scientific community is working on street drugs that will bypass the gut mechanisms so smaller doses of immodium can get you very high. That's the future. 

Immodium normally can't pass the blood-brain barrier unless you overwhelm your gut by taking 100+ pills. 

Yet another hurdle we have in order to deal with our medical needs! 

Well, maybe it will go the other way, Marie. It's kind of got me between tears and rage. There are millions of people who rely on Costco for immodium with different bowel conditions. 

I also take opiates to manage chronic pain so it just feels like the system is closing ranks on me. This somewhat fabricated patient opioid epidemic comes above and before patient drug care and access needs. It's really sad. The FDA and DEA are beholden to no one and impose their rules on us with no voter representation.

Seriously, how many people are out there ODing on immodium? Ridiculous. 

Imodium and Lomotil are totally different classes of drugs never mind prescription or over the counter. Imodium is a pure anti-diarrheal. Lomotil has both anti-spasmodic and anti-diarrheal properties. There should be no confusion about this and everyone should understand what these drugs do when you put them in your body. I was given Lomotil due to a very spasmodic Pouch after takedown which is not the same thing as a runny pouch. A spasmodic Pouch is one that causes bursts of bowel movements right after meals, due to excessive peristalsis. If you throw Imodium at that issue it will not go away and will get worse.

Slouchy, you are probably right that sophisticated and veteran narcotic users know how to counteract Imodium with high powered laxatives. I had a client who had triple cervical fusion surgery and told him to take it easy with the pain meds they gave him and he stated to me he could not get constipated because he has ulcerative colitis. Well he ended up having to have an emergency fecal disimpaction. I will spare you all the details of that procedure but my client likened it to a horrible medieval torture. He is now very afraid to take any pain meds.

I don't know what Costco charges for it, but as an alternative, you can still easily get however much Kirkland brand "loperamide" you want on-line via Amazon or ebay - decent prices, often-times free shipping.   How long this will be available, who knows.

n/a, the sellers on ebay/Amazon buy in massive bulk from Costco and earn pennies on each sale. That's the reseller business model in a nutshell. The prices almost doubled overnight on Amazon and Ebay because they now have to deal with the same restrictions. That's where I usually go as online wasn't much more than in store. I saw the sky high prices and figured I'd stock up at Costco. Then at Costco I experienced the limit - which made sense and correlated with the increased online pricing. 

I haven't been able to find anyone that comes close to Costco's price per pill. They are the gorilla of the immodium sellers. 

I'd love to send a complaint to Costco but I doubt anyone who mattered would see it. It's unfortunate. 

Slouchy,

Even if someone at Costco who "mattered" saw your complaint, how would they know you aren't a desperate, narcotic seeking junkie determined to bypass their rules?  The answer is, they wouldn't.  So I doubt it would get anywhere.  It's an unfortunate fact that all of us need medications that cost a lot, or too much. 

This discussion reminds me of a high school classmate of mine who, as a medical doctor specializing in internal medicine, ended up being investigated by the DEA for overprescribing narcotic meds to his patients.  This investigation came after he prescribed narcotic painkillers to a patient of his who notably lived 180 miles away from his office and later died of an overdose of meds he had prescribed.  Apparently word was out on the street about this guy, for the patient who OD'd to know where to go.  The DEA actually accessed some database that showed he had prescribed the 7th highest amount of pain meds in my State during a specified period of time, so he had been on their "watch list" of doctors who were giving out the narcotic meds like candy.  When the investigation revealed he had prescribed meds and billed treatments to Medicare for patients who died or did not exist, it was basically over.  He pled out to all charges and is now serving time in federal prison.  The moral of the story is this drug epidemic is a HUGE problem, and because it's being coupled with Medicare fraud it is on the radar of both DEA and the FBI.  I also have a high school classmate who works for the FBI in the Medicare fraud unit, so I hear a lot about the general concerns of law enforcement in this field.

It's sad that it effects all of us in this way, but this narcotic drug epidemic is a huge problem that we have to do a better job with as a country and a society.

I don't have a solution, and the impact on access to medication upsets me, but the epidemic isn't the least bit fabricated, Slouchy. Here's some information from The New Yorker today:

"Opioids now kill more than 50,000 Americans a year, 10,000 more than AIDS did at the peak of that epidemic - more, too, than gun homicides and motor-vehicle accidents. Opioid overdose is now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50."

I feel bad for those people... really I do but we NEED our meds just to exist and try to live a half decent Life... I am living with Metastatic Colon Cancer and I just started Keytruda on October 9Th and let me tell you the frequency is twice as much as I went before and I’ve always had high frequency! I take both Lomotil and Imodium together and thy helps but I may now have to add another something to this (what I think is a boring cocktail)! 

Dont know what all the hype is about I’ve NEVER come close to getting high from either drug!!!