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A Last Resort If You Can't Find An EpiPen

You usually throw out old medication, but an EpiPen could still be good after it's expiration date.

The FDA has declared a nationwide shortage of EpiPens. So what should you do if you find yourself needing to get your hands on one?

If you absolutely can't find one where you live, you may want to look to your old ones. A 2015 study by the Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology studied 35 expired EpiPens. They found that injectors were still good up to two years after their expiration date. So if you're in a serious tight spot you should be able to use an expired one, with a few important exceptions.

Take a look at the medicine. If it's pink, brown, cloudy, or has solid particles in it, throw it out. Those are signs that the medicine has decayed.

Now this is a last resort, so you want to exhaust your options before you get to this point. Here's a few of them:

  • Make sure you call all your local pharmacies to see if anyone has the medicine.
  • You can also call up Mylan, the EpiPen's manufacturer. They may know of somewhere you can get some.
  • Ask your pharmacist for generic versions of the EpiPen.
  • Consider buying from healthwarehouse.com. At the time this article was written, it currently has several generics available for purchase.

But just in case none of these work, you'll want to keep that old EpiPen on hand.

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