# Do SSRIs expire?



## R (Jun 13, 2006)

I found my old zoloft from 2005. 

It says to discard them after 12/05, but I have never heard of SSRIs expiring. 

Anyone got any info on this?


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## Noca (Jun 24, 2005)

all drugs expire


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## njodis (Nov 8, 2006)

Yeah. I'm no expert, but I think they will just be less effective, or not work at all.


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## Speak Easy (Jun 27, 2006)

Yeah, they expire. If it says not to take it after a certain date, then don't take it. You're wasting your time. Also, keeping it in warm moist environments (i.e., a bathroom cabinet) could add to deterioration


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## UltraShy (Nov 8, 2003)

Speak Easy said:


> Yeah, they expire. If it says not to take it after a certain date, then don't take it. You're wasting your time. Also, keeping it in warm moist environments (i.e., a bathroom cabinet) could add to deterioration


There has been much debate regarding when drugs truly expire. For the most part, the dates you see are largely arbitrary with things like a drug maker stamping it for 18 months after they make it or a pharmacy telling you to discard one year after they dispense it in their bottle.

Congress has even held hearings on this as I recall and found that some drugs are still fine 10 or 15 years after expiration. Unfortunately, I'm not a pharmacist, so I wouldn't know which ones. Certainly, you don't want to use a drug that has gone bad, but you can also see the financial incentive drug makers have to put on unrealistically short dates so you toss them out & buy more of their overpriced pills.

Drugs do lose potency over time, but unless you're a pharmacist you're unlikely to know how fast this really happens. Some drugs do last almost forever. I recall a discussion of this on sci.med.pharmacy and a pharmacist talked about his tour of duty in Vietnam where they used morphine that was labeled with expiration dates from the Korean War era 15 years prior. He assured everyone that morphine still works a generation after it's made.

And I would fully agree with the comment above about how many folks store drugs poorly using the "medicine cabinet" in their bathroom. I store bars of soap in mine. There is no way I'd store pills in that sauna. Dark, dry, and room temp is the proper way to store most meds -- I use a file cabinet myself.


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