Unfortunately, this combo is extremely common. I worked in retail for 9 years up until about 4 years ago. An older (family medicine) physician down the street prescribed all of his Medicaid patients the same 3 meds: Norco 10/325mg #150, Soma #120 and Xanax 1mg #90. (Just so you know, I am not singling out Medicaid in any way at all. He happened to contract with many Medicaid plans that other doctors in the area were not. That population is younger and most are not on meds for HTN, DM, etc.) It makes no sense that he happens to find a need to prescribe (yes, he is still in practice) the exact same 3 meds, of the same strength with the same sig to all of his patients. I hope he has changed his prescribing habits. We also had another doctor on the same street that had a cash-only pill mill where every patient was prescribed high doses of oxy (luckily he lost his license after many complaints to the board, mostly from family members of his patients).
I do have a recommendation for new pharmacists. It is very difficult for someone like me who is very empathetic to refuse someone in distress. It took me a couple of years to gain a backbone and firmly deny certain RX's despite their sob stories. I worked in a local grocery store pharmacy that had a more independent feel. Make decisions as soon as possible on how you are going to handle certain situations. For example, I decided that I would only fill controlled substances 3 days early on a 30 day supply. I felt so much better and more confident once I decided how to approach situations. You know what? The patients didn't stop filling at my pharmacy and most of them did not scream and yell. For some reason I was afraid of putting my foot down earlier, but I wish I would have.
I am so glad that we are moving in such a positive direction i.e. opioid crisis awareness, insurers limiting what and how much is prescribed, more pharmacists refusing to fill high doses and combinations of meds, state controlled substance reports (I loved this one because I had hard evidence to refuse to fill an Rx), new recommendations for maximum daily morphine equivalent doses and regulatory agencies cracking down on over-prescribers and pill mills.