I am writing this as important and helpful information for people from around the world who visit Bali, and end up staying for so long that you are out of, and no longer have access to the medications that you take back home, but are in need of relief. I am not writing this with the intention of helping you “score some pills” to get high on, but what you do with this information is your own business, and I’m big believer in personal freedoms.
I suffer from a very painful and annoying intestinal disease, and so for years, I have taken an opioid based medication to slow intestinal function, in quantities that also relieve the associated pain as well. Thus, I have spent most of my adult life with a very high tolerance to opioid pills and opiates. Anyone with such a tolerance, regardless of how you got to this stage in life, knows that a potentially painful detox is coming, if and when your prescription from back home runs out, and so you probably sought out this blog after Googling and researching that the strongest pain killer that you can legally obtain in Indonesia, specifically Bali in my case, is a drug produced by Kimia Farma called “Coditam,” which is five hundred milligrams of Paracetamol (acetaminophen) with thirty milligrams of codeine.
Indonesia is currently, as of this writing, cracking down hard on drugs coming into this country, and this political weight has spilled over into tighter restrictions on what is available legally while you are here. The story has been told to me, time and time again by my local friends here, that a mere few years ago, you could likely walk in to most any apotek (pharmacy) and ask for whatever you needed, and most would be happy to sell you quantities of pills higher than that of your prescription from a local doctor, or even sell you whatever you need with no prescription at all. Those days are, unfortunately over, and new rules have been put on pharmacies and general practitioners, specifically pertaining to the distribution of Coditam.
The real deal as of this writing is that a general practitioner here in Bali CAN write you a prescription for Coditam, but they cannot legally write a quantity higher than twenty pills, and some of them, especially those who run an after hours practice right out of their homes, won’t even take the risk of doing that for you. They will often explain to you exactly what I have written thus far about Indonesia’s tighter restrictions, and many will go on to flat out tell you that they cannot legally write you a prescription for Coditam. That is not true. If they say that, it really means that they WON’T write that prescription for you, probably because it is simply not worth the risk to them. They will also explain to you that only a specialist can legally write a Coditam prescription for larger quantities, which turns out to be true. On an interesting side note, many of these doctors here have explained to me that I would be best to consult a psychiatrist to get the prescription that I seek, which is baffling to me when you’re in need of a pain killer, but I believe that psychiatrists here in Indonesia have a higher prescribing power, and that’s why they keep referring to them for you to have better success to get what you need. At least I hope that’s the case, because if not, then apparently many people just think I’m crazy in the head. (Insert laughter here.)
So by now as you are reading this, it sounds like mostly bad news, but there IS a way legally obtain the Coditam that you need, for whatever reason that you should need it. Just don’t expect high quantities, and be happy with the batches of twenty at a time that you can get. If you’ve made such a wild and drastic change to your life that you are now, albeit temporarily, living in Bali Indonesia, then you are just going to have to make due with what is available. However, you’ve already come this far, so gaining the courage to get past your ailments in order to be able to stay here is one more important step in your journey. Sometimes just standing out at the rooftop pool at my apartment here as the sun sets, right after a swim, is moment of clarity and sanity that can be very healing, even if only for a short time.
There are two ways in which I’ve been able to get the Coditam that I desperately need, and between these two ways, I have had to do this four times already over the course of the last month, as I’ve been out of my opioid medication from back in The United States for at least that amount of time already. Keep in mind that I am living temporarily in Bali Indonesia on a very tight budget. I am not here as a tourist with no worries of money. Hell, if that were the case, then I’d just hop a flight back home to the states to refill my usual meds, which would be ideal, but the fifteen hundred dollars that it would take to make that round-trip is not something I have laying around, and in fact is money that I can stretch out a living here in Bali for a very long time with. In fact, if any wealthy person who may be reading this blog can sympathize and wish to help this once-lost (in life) traveler, who has now begun to find himself, in a place that is quite literally a half a world away, then by all means, please contact me via the contact link on this blog site. Somehow, someday, I will always pay it forward.
The first option is a bit more pricey, but this is the first method that I found to get a prescription for twenty Coditams, which at the time, I needed desperately, as my usual medication from home had just run out, and I was extremely fearful of a painful detox, on top of the intestinal complications that I would no longer be regulating. There is a medical clinic called Penta Medica here in Denpasar. On my first visit here, which came recommended by the locals that I live around in my neighborhood, I was explained that there is an additional fee that would need to be paid if I did not have an Indonesian Identification. Essentially, this is the “tourist price,” as is a consequence from time to time for us foreign travelers from the western world that they refer to as “bules.” I even had my Indonesian girlfriend with me, but even with her acting as my translator and negotiator (to which she is terrible at negotiating, but I love her to death anyway,) and yet still I could not avoid paying this price. The visit cost me, at that time, 508,000 rupiah, or about forty-five dollars. I came prepared with everything that I had, to show the doctor that I legitimately need Coditam. I brought along my empty prescription bottles from back home, my passport, my extendable visa that I was carrying with me, and also a backup paper where I asked my girlfriend to translate a brief history of my pain and intestinal problems, and a brief story of why I was there to get Coditam. I was called back quickly, even with a waiting room full of people, which appeared to me to be one little advantages or percs of paying the tourist price. The doctor that I got spoke enough English so that I could explain my predicament, and seemingly in a rush, he quickly gave me the speech of how he can only legally write me a prescription for twenty Coditams, and then said that he would indeed do that for me, but also added that “we don’t have it stocked here in our pharmacy, so you’ll have to get it at another apotek.” I was relieved at this point, just to receive this prescription. I had bought myself some time, albeit just a little bit of time, but time none the less.
However, this mission wasn’t quite yet over, as this next step of finding the pharmacy that would actually have Coditam in stock (or simply admit that they have it in stock,) proved to be quite a hassle, but fortunately just a onetime hassle, because this was my first try at this, and I paid attention and learned from it immensely. Just down the same street from Penta Medica was a Kimia Farma, which also happens to be the manufacturer of Coditam here in Indonesia, so I thought, “hey, this place has got to have it in stock.” Well, they didn’t have it, of course, and off to the next apotek that I could find I went. To make a long story short, it turned out to be the fourth apotek that I stopped at in about a four kilometer radius that finally had what I needed, and was able to fill my prescription. This is when the next surprise emerged while on this mission. The cost of just twenty pills was 115,000 rupiah. However, after all that I had been through to get this, and the looming threat of an unpleasant detox, I felt it to be a drop in the bucket at the time. I had now completed my first attempt to deal with my medication issues here in Bali, and had learned so very much in the process. I made those twenty pills stretch a long time for someone with my physical tolerance that has been building for years, which wasn’t easy, but it was certainly much better than the world of discomfort that life would have become for a good while.
My second experience went quite a bit smoother, because now I was already armed with much more information from my first experience. This time, I went straight to a different Kimia Farma, that was one of a few of them that has a clinic right there on site. I asked my girlfriend to write a new and improved, more informative note for me, explaining my medical case, what I needed (Coditam,) and how I was already aware that twenty was the maximum, and that I was okay with that. This time, I paid just 100,000 rupiah for the clinic visit, and after the same brief explanation from this doctor about suggesting that I eventually see a specialist (and again mentioned psychiatry specifically,) he wrote me the prescription for twenty Coditams. This also happened to be the one Kimia Farma that actually, also stocked Coditam as well, so this turned out to be a one stop mission. While still an expensive experience, I got my cost now down to about 215,000 rupiah for the entire experience, including the clinic visit and the price of the pills. All in all, this worked out to be just under one dollar per pill when all said and done. I was able to repeat this process, via the same Kimia Farma, just over a week later.
Which brings me to me to me most recent experience. Knowing full well that I could not keep sustaining a consistently healthy life here in Bali with these one-off missions to get the medication that I need, forever, I had spent all that time in between talking to the many friends that I have made here in Denpasar, in my neighborhood, near my apartment. You may be surprised that even among the locals, very few of them had ever even heard of Coditam or knew what codeine even was, which is a fascinating observation, in and of itself, and even makes me envious of how people here have not yet been so exposed to the death grip of corrupt, big Pharma in the western world. Anyhow, I finally met a friend of a friend, who was such a kind and nice man, as are all of the people in my neighborhood, but he did not speak a word of English, and my Indonesian is coming along more slowly than world peace. He offered to take me to a doctor who could help me, after I had an Indonesian speaking friend help explain to him my problem. I hopped onto the back of his motorcycle and off we went, with little ability to effectively communicate at this point. Where we ended up was right back at Penta Medica. I quickly tried to explain, and even got out my phone with my translator app that comes in handy, to try to let him know that I’ve already been here, and that they cannot provide the help that I really need at a price that I could continue to afford for their limited ability to prescribe only twenty pills of Coditam per visit. This was not at all making sense to him, as he seemed to shrug off everything I was trying to convey. He walked in ahead of me and begun to speak to the lady at the front desk in Indonesian. Then I was asked to interject and briefly explain what I needed. As it turned out, my new found friend in the course of a very quick negotiation, had got me the local price for another visit there, and after a quick look over the file that they had on me from my previous visit there and a brief chat with the doctor in the backroom, she told me that he would write me a prescription for another twenty pills, and the price would be 300,000 rupiah for the visit this time, down from the 508,000 rupiah that it cost me last time. At this point, I was pretty well stuck. I was thinking to myself that had I just stuck with the method that had worked twice before and that had only amounted to just under a dollar per pill when all was said and done, then that would have been more economically sound than what I just got myself into, but I tried to keep only positive thinking in my head, as has been something that since I’ve been living in Bali has been a more common practice now for me, for the first time in my life. Part of coming so far to find my lost self in Bali Indonesia was to leave my pessimist past behind me. Well, chalk it up to coincidence or fate, depending on your own personal thoughts and beliefs about this life we live, but in addition to the doctor that day writing me the usual prescription for twenty pills of Coditam, he also gave me the usual explanation of how I would need to see a specialist in Bali if I were to have any hope of getting higher quantities of the medication that I needed, and he wrote me a referral to such a specialist. So, depending on how this continued quest will go to sustain health, and secure my ability to lawfully obtain the Coditam that I need while I live temporarily here in beautiful Bali Indonesia, will determine if this guide that I have written for all of you will have a very happy “Part 2” in the near future.
That said however, I’m right back to the information gathering phase once again, as I research the prices and likelihood that such a specialist at the Bali International Medical Center will be able to help my case on a semi long-term basis, and even more to consider is if that help will be within the realm of reason when it comes to the cost of this visit (or visits.) If anyone who is reading this has been on some sort of opioid for whatever medical condition that you have for a long period of time, then you are certainly no stranger to the roller coaster that we sometimes live when it comes to getting the medicine that we really need. I could dedicate an entire blog site just to convey my deep and knowledgeable thoughts on the bullshit laws and political hoops that are constantly put in the way of our true, genuine freedom, especially in the western world, but for now, I’ll leave you with this, hopefully valuable information that I have provided, based off of my current and ongoing, direct experiences here in Bali Indonesia. I don’t yet know how I will proceed, and if I will take the monetary gamble with this specialist referral, but if I do, I will most certainly update this guide as to how it goes.
To everyone who found this blog because your currently in need of Coditam (codeine) while you are staying in Bali, I wish you the best of luck! The feeling and fright of a detox, of any degree for that matter, is one that I understand through a lifetime of experience, and do not wish on anyone, not even my enemy.
If this guide has helped you or given you some hope, please like it and share it someone else you know who could benefit from the information. “Pay it forward” as we say. Also, if you have further information or wish to add your own experiences with getting Coditam here in Bali, or even just a question, then please leave it in the comments.
Revision on September 25, 2017: I have added a short video, showing you one of the Kimia Farma locations that I found to be the most helpful.
