GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

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.