ElephantGin

Okay, had a tough time figuring out what forum to put this in... We shall see.

I have various health conditions and end up taking about 15 vitamins a day (D3, magnesium, Vitamin C, Leutin, Fiestin, B2, Zinc, Baby Aspirin, Milk Thistle, Echinacea, Basis, 2 others).
Not taking them with me is not a possibility.

About to go on a 7 month trek through Central and South America, and am faced with the daunting task of figuring out how to *best* carry them.

In the past, here's what I've done:
Put each of my daily stack into a small ziplock pill pack, then stuff them into a kitchen plastic container (see below). This fits about 3 months of pills. This time I need significantly more.
Ran across another blog where the person put one type of pill in a ziplock bag and labeled them.

Wonder if having all the same pills in a bag, then layering them would reduce the amount of space it would take in the container vs mixed?

Carrying bottles is out of the question - 24 bottles is huge.
Regarding customs, I just carry some color printouts of all my vitamin bottles lined up with one pill in front of it - so they can match it against my pills. Actually - through 50+ countries never had anyone even inquire. (checked or carry-on). But this time going through Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and other places I'm a bit more hesitant. All prescription meds I take are in original packing with prescription.

Has anyone seen a better solution for packing pills? Already have a super tight suitcase (and please take resist the temptation to ask/tell me I don't need that many pills)..

Thanks!

whitewave

I would skip the kitchen containers and put them in gallon zip lock bags or even the zip lock pa kicking bags you can buy for instance af Target by the kitchen supplies/laundry supplies/closet items. Or perhaps compression packing cubes.

With ziplock you could throw away as you use and are done with that bag (but the environment!!! 🤭 )

Hoyaheel

I like the idea of using non-stiff containers to hold all the pills. So maybe 1 month of daily pill bags (then you could restock for the next month and so on?) with the back up pill bags (single pill, larger bag) could be put into gallon ziplocs or fabric compression bags or packing cubes or dry sacs or.....yeah, anything but a solid kitchen storage container would be easier to pack. And if you have a few you can better squeeze into the space you have? (I personally like the idea of a stuff sac sort of bag - vvery thin, can re-use, heck you could put souvenirs in them and ship back home when you're done with it? Or just keep it stuffed in a corner with dirty socks until you can launder ;-)

TWA884

Please follow this thread as it moves to the Travel Products forum.

TWA884
Moderator, Travel Tools

Hoyaheel

Also want to raise possibility of a "restock". Is there any place you can visit during your travels where you would be able to buy replacements for any of the pills so you don't have to carry them all? Can someone from "home" mail them to you at a couple of time points?

azepine00

I would absolutely get a prescription even for non-prescription items when doing this on such scale in countries sensitive to that topic.

TWA884

It would appear that your decongestant may be Sudafed. Sudafed contains pseudoephedrine which is illegal to possess in many Latin America countries.

Global Adventurer

I travel for 6 months at a time, and I use Amazon 's PILL PACKS to hold my various vitamins. There's a place to mark what's inside with a sharpie. I take several empty ones too to fill with daily dosages for a week at a time. Has been working for me for several years.

​​​​​​LIke the previous poster indicated, ORIGINAL Sudafed with ephedrine by products such as psuedoephedrine is ILLEGAL in many countries around the world as it's a precursor for the illegal manufacturing of methamphetamine. In the USA you can't buy it unless you provide identifying information at a pharmacy and you are limited on how many you can purchase. So, do not bring it.

ElephantGin

Thanks, I think the 'pill pack' is similar to the photo I posted above? the small individual plastic bags with a ziplock on the top? That's the best I've found too (so far). However when you have lots of pills per day of various sizes - they aren't uniform in size, so when you put them in a box, or bigger ziplock bag there tends to be a lot of 'empty space' between pills.

Maybe there's no better solution than this (and it is convenient). I just can't help thinking it's an engineering issue - if I could just pack them correctly they would take up much less space in the luggage. As someone who does long trips - sure you know how valuable suitcase real-estate is.

For instance, if I took that same plastic box and just dumped all my pills in there together, with some desiccant packs - I'm positive they would all fit with much room to spare - although the customs guys would probably crap themselves.

Going to do a test where i use larger 4x6 bags, fill each one with a specific pill and then layer them on top of each other.

As for the whole Sudefed thing - those are just pictures found on google - I was trying to show my options - pill packs, boxes, larger bags. I'm not taking sudafed with me.

Global Adventurer

Yes, the pill packs that are pictured in the previous posting is the ones I use. You want something that you can label in advance and the customs officer would have an idea of what it might be. You just use dozens of them until you have all your pills packed. And then I put all of them in quart size Ziploc bags. To double secure them. I've never been stopped by customs and I've been doing this for years. Since 2013.

The thing with drugs, most agencies have field drug tests and also drug dogs. If the dogs don't detect anything then they won't further check, but if there's a detection they will field test suspected ones. Any of this happening would be almost zero chance. Having them in pill paks are the best for labeling and the paks are for pills, not a Tupperware container.

Global Adventurer

I just want to add, that some vitamins that I take, if they are huge like horsepills like multivitamins and calcium pills, I bring some, and buy them on the go in whichever country I'm at. Vitamins like D3, Fish Oil, Calcium, Milk Thistle, Multi, C, etc I've found in any country I've visited, including low strength aspirin. You can also stockup if you visit Brazil, by ordering from amazon brazil site or just go into the major stores with pharmacies or health food stores.