How to Identify a Pill
At some point, most people will encounter a random pill on the bottom of your purse or in your medicine cabinet. Parents may get concerned if they find a pill in their child's bedroom or pocket. There's many situations where you may need to identify a pill, determining the drug type and pill size in terms of milligrams. Follow these easy steps to identifying pills.
Things You'll Need
- An Internet Connection
- A Ride to the Pharmacy
- Possibly a Ride to the Police Station
Instructions
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CHECK A PILL IDENTIFYING WEBSITE: The first step to identifying a pill is to check a pill identifying website. RXList.com's Pill Identification Tool (see the link below) and Drugs.com's Pill Identification Wizard (see link below) are tool wonderful websites that can help you to identify what type of pill you have. You can search the pill database by entering the tablet imprint code, the pill color and the pill shape.
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BRING THE PILL TO A PHARMACY: If you cannot identify the pill using the pill identifier websites like RXList.com's Pill Identification Tool and Drugs.com's Pill Identification Wizard, the next step is to visit the pharmacy. The pharmacist is familiar with many different types of drugs and they have entire databases of pill information. In fact, when the police recover an unknown drug in pill form, their first stop is typically the local pharmacy.
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VISIT THE POLICE DEPARTMENT: In a few cases, the pill may not be a medication. The pill may actually be an illicit drug like ecstasy. Does the pill have an imprint of a little picture or random symbol? Ecstasy pills are often imprinted with random symbols and pictures (i.e. a picture of an elf or a star). If the pill is of a suspicious nature (i.e. it was found in a teen's bedroom) and if the pill cannot be identified online or with the assistance of a pharmacist, the next step is to bring the pill to the local police department. Police are adept at identifying illicit drugs through visual examination of the pill or using a drug field test.
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Tips & Warnings
If you take many medications and vitamins, start a drug notebook. Take a picture of each pill and place the picture inside a plastic sheet protector along with the drug information sheet and other medication or vitamin information. This will make identifying pills easy, especially if you switch medications, and a random pill of the old medication turns up months later.
Never take an unidentified pill. This can lead to deadly drug interactions with other medications or a deadly physical reaction to the drug. Furthermore, if you don't know what drug you're taking and something goes wrong, the hospital staff won't know what to treat you for.
