Taking prescription medication on carry on luggage

It is recommended to take pills in their original container since their labels usually contain identifying information and often even the name of the prescribing doctor. In this case, the non-liquid bottles will stay in your carry-on unless there is another reason to manually search your bag.

In practice, using a zip-lock has never been a problem for me. I generally prefer this for small trips to avoid to not bring many more pills than needed and save on bulk. When I need roughly the amount of a bottle for longer trips, then I just take the bottle.

Now for medicine that are liquids or gels, you should place them in the ziplock as they will have to pass through security along with other liquids. Now if those liquids are too large or need to be in a cooler, then you will have to show them to the agent and mention that those are liquid/special medication. This also applies to medication that need their own injectors or needles. In such cases, security agent will check them by hand before or after going through the x-ray machine.

I had no trouble taking a quart ziploc bag of all my meds on the plane. All were in their original bottles, however a few days worth were in a pill calendar. It didn't come up, but if inspected, all the pills in the calendar would have matched pills in the bottles.

If you don't want your fellow pax seeing what you are taking, then either use a pill calendar as I did, or take it into the bathroom. For a single dose or day's worth, you could substitute 1-2 small ziplocs for the pill calendar.

Another option is, after security, sit at a table in a restaurant or seating at a gate no one is at, and go through your pill bottles and put your next dose in a small ziploc you brought along. You could do the same in the airplane lavatory, but that is very rude if there's a line.