Different rules, different everything. One of my outfit’s department heads is a native of Brazil, and he sort of tourist-guided my wife and me when we were down there in September, even though we were there for work.
One thing he turned me onto years ago is a Brazilian medication called “Tandrilax.” I was having some horrible back pain while we were at some meeting in London several years back. He noticed my discomfort and asked what was wrong. I told him, and he pulled out a small strip of pink pills and told me to take one before going to bed. I said I would try anything at that point. So I took his Brazilian pink pill, and the next morning, not only was my back pain gone, but it didn’t come back, either! I couldn’t believe it. These pills cost under a dollar each, and yet just one of them works better than a battery of medications and massages. I had no idea what was in them. I was speculating. Fermented piranha juice, forbidden Andean herbs, no idea. But I later showed the box to a pharmacist in Germany, who recognized all the ingredients as perfectly legit—he just hadn’t seen them all together in that ratio before, and not all in one pill.
I looked to see where I could buy them in Europe. Nowhere. So I looked in the USA. Also nowhere. They are apparently not sold or offered outside of Brazil. I can understand why. The worldwide Pharma industry must sell hundreds of millions a year in back pain medication, and I’m sure they keep the dosage low enough that you have to buy a lot of it before it starts to help. Their bottom line would suffer greatly if patients could get medication that was far more effective, and cost under $1. My wife and I bought 100 of the pills while we were there, since our travel plans do not include spontaneous, casual weekend jaunts to Brazil for refills. They supposedly require a prescription, but my colleague reminded me: Brazilian rules in Brazil. I went into a pharmacy, asked in my broken Portuguese if they had Tandrilax. Obviously, I was a foreigner, but the woman at the counter went to fetch a guy in a white coat, who made up some pseudo-prescription on the spot, signed it in the universal doctor’s script of Illegibilese, and everyone was happy (especially yours truly!!).
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