Is it possible for a pharmasist to mess up a prescription?

Question

well i dont really know how medicines are made, but what i'm asking is.. Is it possible to accidently put a different medicine into a capsule? i just got prescribed to adderall last week. i had taken it several times before i was prescribed to it. the most i've ever taken at a time was 60 mg and the least was 20 mg. i love how it made me feel... i got so much homework done and i actually WANTED to finish it. i was very social also and in a very good mood. I had never taken a 10 mg adderall pill before, and that is what i got prescribed to. at first i took two of my 10 mg pills...it did NOTHING. before i was prescribed and i took 20 mg it worked. Yesterday and today i took six 10 mg pills so 60 mg all together and all it did was make me very untalkative, not able to concentrate, irritable, extremely dizzy, and a big, crying mess.

(read the additional details because i'm running out of room)

Answer 1

No,

Your pharmacist is not creating those capsules he/she is simply transferring them from one container to another.  Drugs are made on highly controlled, extremely clean assembly lines.  Capsules are formed and filled by machines, pills are compressed by machines as well; there is no human interaction.

Not all formulations of drugs are the same, they vary with each brand so that they not infringe on a patent.  However, the FDA requires that the ACTIVE ingredients be identical.  If there was a mistake in your prescription then it would be a mistake with ALL of that type of drug that came off of that assembly line and that would be a huge noticeable problem.

The difference in color means little, artificial colors are added to medication all the time.

Medications like this are very tough to judge, their effects vary over time and form person to person.  They can also vary in that the same person and they vary by the dosage and the time on it.  This is why it is so important for you to stick to the dosage your doctor recommends.

Imagine you have a see-saw condition; you have a lack of something and the adderall is putting that back into balance, but that balance is delicate and fragile.  You can take too much and throw it out of balance on the other side.  In fact one side effect of an overdose is depression.

Adderall is the combination of 4 different drugs that are metabloized at different rates so a different dosage can cause different effects.

Now that said, the chance of human error is always possible.  The pharmasist could have given you the wrong drug or the wrong dosage.  I doubt that, but it is always possible.