GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

I am trying to find a place on the net that I can buy hormones without a prescription. I know the risks in self-medicating, and as soon as I can find a reputable and sympathetic doctor, I plan on going that route. I am just a little impatient and I want to start now...
Any ideas?

Hi Nycole!

I know a lot of girls use Inhouse Pharmacy. You can probably Google them. You might also take a look at the Gender Identity Center website and their local resource list...

http://www.gicofcolo.org/

There are several doctors, including some not even on the list, that treat trans people here. Colorado has a lot of trans resources, so finding a doc shouldn't be much hassle.

Thanks Hon!!!!

I will look at both, I appreciate your help!

If you are in a major city, try going to one of the major low-income subsidized health clinics. They often have very sympathetic physicians with low-income gender patients for whom they prescribe HRT without much rigmarole. From what I have read, this is true at least in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Seattle, and so on. With a prescription, you can then purchase estradiol pills, and other generics, at places like Walmart for about $4.00 per month.

Doesn't Denver have a gender group? What about the WPATH member there, whose name I think is Rachael St. Claire, Psy.D.? She might know about such subsidized health clinics there.

I use Inhouse Pharmacy. Have had no problems so far. There's a link for transgender customers for hormones. Easy to order and meds get here within 2 weeks or less.

I would put all my resources into finding a doctor. It can be difficult (I drive 2.5 hours to see mine) but it is totally worth it to know someone is checking your lab work to make sure you are safe and healthy. Once you get the prescriptions, you should be able to get the hormones relatively inexpensively. I hate Wal-Mart, but love the $4 generic prescription drug program.

I agree with Hope. In the long run, you will probably save money just going to a doctor, especially if you are on a few different prescriptions.

There are easily ten doctors in Denver regularly treating transwomen.

I was feeling the same way a month ago. 2 bad there isn't a goodly amount of docs out there to go to. Yeah, like the others said, inhouse seems to be the A+ place. But do please try to locate a doctor.

still cant believe people dont use a doctor and go to inhouse pharmacies online its bad

Please go to a doctor and get prescribed as pharmacies dont know your DNA and can seriously damage your well being
saying a online pharmacy has a link for ts people to order certain hormones and believing thats the right thing to do and believing them is incredibly foolish

Dont be so foolish to do or think otherwise

At what price your life ?

Go to a dr please

Yep the best way for getting hormones is See a doctor get a prescription. Or the internet as has been suggested. However there is an "Old School" method. Which I used when I was under aged (16yrs old at the time I could get a legal script) So I brought Birth control pills from my Genetic/cisgender friend (who didn't take the "pill" so as it was the ideal situation hormone wise)

Do you have any female friends? to buy off of?

Back in the day they had Diane-35. I used to take two per day. Not the healthiest option, but worked for a while.

And another, ahem, "old school" method for erasing any facial hair shadow: using a hair bleaching product like Blondissima on your face.

Again, not healthy at all. But the shadow was gone. Ah happy days.

Not having a physician to look after your health isn't the half of the problem. You don't know *what* you are getting when you buy a drug online. For all you know it's the drug you ordered and for all you know it's poisonous.

I'm not exaggerating anything either.

You're transitioning. I know it's hard to wait but the process takes a long time. Waiting for a prescription is nothing compared to waiting for the hormones to actually do something. Set up an appointment and get it.

Let me put it another way: if you get your hormones with a prescriptions you know that what you bought is what it says on the bottle and that the dosages should be right for you. If you buy them online you have a good chance of getting hormone pill shaped junk. Consider: what involves more waiting, waiting to get a proper prescription or making up for lost time after taking a fake drug or on-and-off real/fake drugs for a year or so?

Actually, no, you don't. There have been cases of mistakes made and people who got sick and even died due to mislabeling when getting medicines from a pharmacy, with a prescription.

On the other hand, all over the world, I'd say the majority of transwomen are going the black market route. The reason is simple: in most countries you won't find any doctor or therapist who will prescribe for you. Also, in countries like the USA you have people who cannot afford the therapy + doctor and for whom starting transition is a matter of life and death.

Considering that many, probably most transitioners are doing things on their own, and how few cases of getting the wrong drug are reported, I have no reason to think that going through the "legit" channels in any way increases the likelihood of getting the real thing.

I've only heard rumours of people getting the wrong stuff, "someone told me a friend of a friend got the wrong pills..." and those rumours may be started by people with a vested interest in having everybody use the "legit" route.

That's why the DIY groups are huge, with thousands of members. Not everybody is a middle class transitioner in the USA, and not everybody is in a position to just wait. Some people have GID and the alternative is suicide.

Example:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TsDoItYourselfHormones/

A group with over 11,000 members from all over the world.

Sorry Marcella, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you.

Firstly, all drugs are copyrighted. That is to say that the appearance of the pill itself is unique to that drug. As someone who takes hormones regularly you should know what your hormone pills look like and be able to inspect them to make sure they actually are what the bottle says they are. So, if you're getting your pills though a pharmacy you can be pretty darn sure that what you got in your bottle is actually what the bottle says is in the bottle.

On the internet the problem isn't them shipping your the wrong drug by mistake it's them selling you a counterfeit pill. Counterfeit medications from overseas pharmacies are a major problem, and it's not being drummed up by pharmaceuticals either.

As for you never hearing about people taking counterfeit hormones: hormones work slowly. If you're taking a counterfeit hormone pill you're not going to notice that slightly less is happening than usual because the usual is unmeasurably slow anyway.

It doesn't take long to get drugs from a physician.

And as I've written above, not everybody can afford a physician and most people live in countries where no one is going to prescribe HRT for "changing gender."

It's a matter of necessity, plain and simple. I'd say less than 1% of all MTFs are actually middle class women in countries where doctors are ready to prescribe for money.

I'm not the sort of person who just grants respectability on institutions because I'm told that they are respectable. I require evidence.

Show me any evidence that the chances of getting the wrong prescription through the black market is greater than that of getting the wrong hormones at the pharmacy. I cannot just believe in opinions: I require some proof.

Just recently here in Canada my prescription got messed up: I was given twice the amount prescribed by my endo, because of an error. It happens often, and it's the person's responsibility to make sure she's getting what she needs.

We all should try to educate ourselves. Sometimes blind trust in your doctor or pharmacist is the road to an early funeral.

Okay, not to get into a row, but... While I agree without question that getting them from a doctor IS the ideal way, the reality is that many of us didn't start that way.

My first year on HRT was from a place overseas on the internet, and the HRT was most certainly NOT counterfeit.

So over generalizations are not always the ideal. While yes, some people have had issues, most have not. I carefully researched the pharmacy overseas that I went with specifically because this was such a major step I was taking. By the time I actually was under a doctor's care, I already had B cups, and the rest of my body, and face had changed so dramatically I still have people ask me who did my FFS.

All drugs yes are copyrighted and patented, BUT not all countries follow this as a rule of law. India, aside from becoming a huge outsource market hurting the US has been quite successfully making generics that violate international laws on copyright.

Balance that for all it's bitching about it, the US is one of the biggest UN violators in history on any number of issues, and it's really the wild, wild, west...

It's funny how people in Country X assume the laws of Country X apply to the whole planet.

Who here remembers when Airport Oaks was the InHouse for us?

It doesn't, if you're suitably middle-class, insured and stuff. I was/am. I see my doc once a year, get blood tests taken, renew my scripts. But had I not had such advantages, I'd have gone DIY. In fact, I was very tempted as there's a strong incentive for the overseas pharmacies to do their stuff right - they're hardly all fly-by-night operators as some of them have been around for like a decade. If you're poor, can't afford tests, docs and stuff, and mebbe also can't deal with docs because you're not white-collar enough or not suitably socialised (docs do treat ppl with degrees a lot better than others: it's happened to me awfully many times already): go DIY, I say. Of course it's more dangerous than by doing it with a doc, but like Marcie said - if it's life-or-death, hey, DIY sure beats a noose.

And as to docs getting the dosages right - eh, feh. No they don't. And it's a bit of a guinea-pig job anyway - they don't know your body and your endocrine 'til they try stuff out. And while tests tell something, they sure don't give straightforward answers, and my docs have admitted as much, too (MDs, qualified endos, the lot): dosages and delivery methods need to be found out by experimenting, by patient feel.

Look, I'm not saying that if the only option is to use black market hormones that anyone should rule that out as an option. What I'm saying is that using black market drugs should be the absolute last resort.

As was already pointed out in this thread getting black market drugs really aren't appreciably cheaper (if actually cheaper at all) than getting them though a legitimate pharmacy.

The problem with buying from the internet is that you are not buying from a legitimate pharmacy. You are buying off of the black market. If you have ever studied product that is bought and sold on black markets you would understand the amount of unscrupulous profiteering and counterfeit product that is available.

Even if the website that you do business with tries to be honest you have no assurance that their suppliers are honest or their supplier's suppliers are honest. In contrast a legitimate pharmacy's supply chain is very thoroughly policed and monitored in ways that are not possible in underground economies.

To repeat what I was saying: the problem with the underground pharmacy isn't that you are getting your prescription filled incorrectly, the problem is that you are more than acceptably likely to purchase counterfeit medication. If you're especially unlucky what you bought could have been a downright poisonous placebo. The best case scenario for a counterfeit drug would be the actual medication but not made to the standards that guarantee the safety of our drug supply.

Buying internet drugs is a gamble. If you truly have no other option than to buy drugs from the internet then you really don't have a choice but when you *do* have a choice, like the original poster indicated that she has, then buying internet drugs is a an unnecessary and dangerous gamble with your health.

All I ask is some sort of evidence to back up such claims.

Just saying that it's more likely to happen because there is supposed to be more policing through the legitimate channels doesn't cut it.

"Appeal to authority" is a logical fallacy.

I used Inhouse Pharmacy for the first year I was on HRT and STILL use them for the one med my insurance won't cover. So I've been an Inhouse customer, a very happy one, for four years now.

http://www.inhousepharmacy.com

What's the one med my insurance won't cover and why? Finesteride, for hair. Why? Because they won't cover it for women, like ever, because if there's a chance of being pregnant, women shouldn't even be near them. Regrettably there's NO chance I'll ever be pregnant, but my insurance says FEMALE and that's my lot in life.

Truth be told, it's a small price to pay for have that F in all the right places...

As a matter of fact not only do they have a great center in Denver in a brand new building, the group has been around for over 30 years. I took part in a survey in 2006 shortly after they'd moved to their new space. They were adout to give me directions and I said, oh, no need. I used to live across the street half a block up from your new place.

It's warm, comfortable, homey and professional. It has a very i8nviting, human feel to the place, so if you are anywhere near Denver, it's well worth heading out Colfax to federal, and then up federal to 38th street, out to just before Wadsworth there is a right hand turn that is Upham street. They are the nice new professional building on the left, they are down stairs, on the right as you come out of the Elevator. Gender Identity Center of Colorado. If I had known about them back almost twenty years ago, I'd probably have transitioned then. But the net really didn't exist the way it does today, and I was a cickenshit and didn't ask any of the women I met in the bars a single intelligent question in those days.

So, yeah, there is a great place in the DMA, it's actually Wheat Ridge... Humm, also dawns on me that you can take I25 to I70 west, get off at Wadsworth, go south and take your first right afgter the McDonalds, and your first left onto Upham. Or, take the left after the Safeway and then right onto Upham. Either way, it's easy to get to and well worth going to...

Marcella is right, just because it's "a controlled pharmacy" doesn't mean much. Honestly in four years Walgreens has made more mistakes with my meds than Inhouse has. How many mistakes has Inhouse made? NOT ONE. Not saying DIY is better if a doctor is available, and unless your on the western slope somewhere, or way up north by Larime, you should be fine.

If you're in the southern part of the state I know at least one doctor who WILL treat you. Dr. Marci Bowers. One of the finest GRS surgeons (IMHO) in the world is in Trinidad.

As i said previously, there should be no difficulty in Colorado finding a doctor to treat you. There are at least 8-12 physicians working with trans patients here. One would be hard pressed to find a place this size with more resources.

At any rate, anyone that wants to DIY can feel free to do so. I don't think it is as risky as many would portray it. Probably hundreds of transwomen use InHouse. For those that may be US-Centric in their views of what constitutes reputability, the company that makes their generics in India is an American owned company.

All that said, I have found it *cheaper* to work with a doctor. My hormones cost me $6 a month and that is without using insurance. My doctor does not require an inordinate amount of blood work (maybe a couple hundred dollars a year). None of the doctors I have worked with have cost more than the DIY route.

In my experience, a large percentage of the girls I have known to DIY have not *really* done so because of the expense or lack of being able to find a doctor (not here anyway). That is just my opinion based on the people I have known, YMMV.

So if that is based on the people you have known what were their reasons for doing DIY? Was it maybe because they had no desire to subject themselves to intrusive control of their bodies by a medical establishment that in many cases has no clue about Ts? Or was it other factors? How many are in your sample upon which you base that assertion?

It is pointless answering someone that has their own agenda such as you, Deena. Obviously from your second sentence, anything I say on the topic would be discounted. Ultimately, my body and what I do to it is my choice. The same holds true for anyone else.

Getting flagged with a mental disorder can be bad news, and more so in a country with socialized medicine. Once your name is in the database with the code for "gender identity disorder" by its side, you are effectively disqualified for several good jobs. Some scientific jobs that require clearance, for example.

Also, for those who are not permanent residents of a country, or those who are in the process of obtaining citizenship, a psych diagnosis can completely derail the process and make it much more difficult.