The first hospital pharmacy I worked at would have me deliver cocaine in a prescription vial to the OR. They used it as a topical anesthetic for surgeries on mucus membranes and they’d mix it up in the OR. (At that time pharmacies just delivered the drugs and the nurses mixed up solutions and made the IV’s). I found out that if they didn’t use it all, the doctors would give it to the OR techs!
Things were kind of lax on security back then. I was pretty shocked and at that point had never done it before, only smoked some weed. Then I got a new job at a new hospital. One of the guys who worked there turned me on to coke. He told me it was pharmaceutical and he got it from work! At this place it came in 2 different forms, tablets and flakes and we had to make the solution for the anesthetic in the pharmacy because it was a more advanced hospital and we were making the IV s and solutions in the pharmacy .
We had to weigh out the flakes or crush the tablets with a mortar and pestle. There was always residue in and on the mortar and pestle so we would scrape it off and also since the tablets weren’t enteric coated and came in pretty big bottles( I think 250 tablets), they’d kinda break down so we’d take any of the pills that were breaking or degrading and the powder residue.
We did it for about 2-3 years then they stopped using it because by then they were becoming very strict with controlled substances and they’d developed new topical anesthetics for the mucus membranes.
