I have an email account that once served as my hub for veterinary correspondence. Over the years, however, it devolved into the digital equivalent of a junk drawer. Whenever a business from which I will only purchase one item in my lifetime requires an email address and I don’t want my real inbox flooded with spam, I give them that one. My author email is where I keep the “real” mail. My veterinary one? That’s where junk email goes to die.

Which is why I rarely check that email anymore—because, besides being retired, I have no desire to watch my inbox sink under a tidal wave of “exclusive offers” and “last chance deals.” Except for the other day.

By pure chance, I peeked into that wasteland and discovered my DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) license was set to expire in a week. While I almost never write prescriptions for controlled substances anymore, I still like having the option, just in case some animal emergency pops up and I need to play the role of “Veterinarian With a License That Still Counts.”

Naturally, the DEA couldn’t let me slide through renewal without drama. They’ve added a new requirement: eight hours of continuing education on opioids. Of course. Never mind the fact that, as a veterinarian, I’ve never once had an owner come into the clinic saying, “Doc, I think my beagle’s hooked on fentanyl.” However, since veterinarians are technically considered healthcare providers, we are lumped into the same bureaucratic stew. The government, after all, has a sacred duty to make life unnecessarily difficult for as many people as possible, in as many creative ways as possible.

Fine. I found the course available through a continuing education provider I’ve used before. I logged into my account and was promptly informed that my login was incorrect. Of course. I tried to reset the password. Nope. Tried another username. Nada. I finally caved and called tech support. The woman was kind and sympathetic, but after thirty minutes, she still couldn’t unlock the magical gates of access. She promised to “escalate the issue to a higher tier,” which is code for “your problem just got punted into a black hole.”

Meanwhile, I thought I’d multitask and log into my DEA account. Wrong again. I was told my login information was incorrect. I avoided saying a bad word and sent an email for help. To my surprise, someone responded quickly, asking for a screenshot of my login information. Naturally, being the pinnacle of tech literacy that I am, I was unable to manage that task. So, I copied the info—all four things—and hit send. Then I waited. And waited. And after four days of silence, I resent my email. No response. Ah! This was more like the government service I know and love.

Back to the continuing education requirement. Still locked out. I decided to outsmart the system and create a whole new account. During setup, I learned that passwords could only contain certain special characters. Not that they mentioned this back when I created my original password with a comma. Thinking I’d cracked the code, I made a new password with an exclamation point instead of a comma. Nope. Still couldn’t log in. Now, I have three accounts with this provider, two of which I am unable to access. But at last, one finally worked! After paying my $90 fee for the course, I blazed through the eight hours of material in about fifteen minutes, passed the test with a perfect score, and chose “physician” on the drop-down menu since “veterinarian” and “other” were not options. I prayed the DEA wouldn’t notice, or, if they did, they’d just assume I had secretly gone to medical school on the weekends.

Back to the DEA website, which, shocker, still wouldn’t let me log in. In desperation, I managed to unearth a phone number. After an eternity of hold music designed to induce madness and hang-ups, I finally reached a snarky human. He sent me numerous verification texts and an email to confirm I was, in fact, me. The email wouldn’t come through, which was naturally my fault. Mr. Snark suggested I “refresh,” as if I were too stupid to push Send/Receive repeatedly. Then he all but accused me of not “refreshing,” as though I were lying. But eventually, after enough digital back-and-forth to qualify as a relationship, the email arrived, and the snark finally resolved the issue.

At last, I logged onto DEA, completed my application, forked over my $888 (yes, really), and breathed a sigh of relief. At no point during the process did the DEA ask for proof of my eight hours of continuing education. Which means I could have skipped that whole ordeal and gone straight to the part where they relieved me of nearly $900.

Once upon a time—back when life was allegedly more complicated—I received my DEA renewal form in the mail, filled it out, wrote a $5 check (yes, the fee has gone from $5 to $888), and dropped it in the mailbox. Ten minutes, tops. Now? It took me two full mornings of trying to access my two accounts on my own, 30 minutes apiece for tech support calls, five days of unanswered emails, and a small mortgage payment. But hey, at least I didn’t have to lick a stamp!