What arrives in the box
A typical shipment contains the medication itself, syringes or pens matched to your dose, alcohol prep pads, and dose-specific written instructions. Many also include a sharps container. If anything on that list is missing, contact the pharmacy before improvising.
The instructions that come with your prescription are the authoritative ones. They are specific to your product, concentration and dose, and they supersede general guidance including this page.
Subcutaneous is not intramuscular
Subcutaneous injection delivers medication into the fatty layer just under the skin, not into muscle. The needles are short and fine for exactly that reason, and the absorption profile — slower and steadier — is part of how the medication is meant to work.
Common sites are the abdomen at least two inches away from the navel, the front of the thigh, and the back of the upper arm. Pinching a fold of skin helps ensure you are in fat rather than muscle, particularly for leaner people.
Rotation is the part people skip
Injecting repeatedly into the same spot causes lipohypertrophy — firm, lumpy tissue that looks minor and matters a lot. Absorption from that tissue becomes unpredictable, which means your effective dose becomes unpredictable.
Move the site every time. Many people work a simple pattern around the abdomen, shifting an inch or two each dose and alternating sides week to week. Any system works as long as you actually use it.
Check sites before injecting. Skip anything bruised, hard, inflamed, tender, scarred or tattooed.
Technique, briefly
Wash your hands. Clean the site with an alcohol pad and let it dry — injecting through wet alcohol stings unnecessarily. Pinch a fold, insert at the angle your instructions specify, deliver the dose steadily, and wait a few seconds before withdrawing so the dose does not track back out.
A small amount of bleeding or a brief sting is normal. Persistent pain, spreading redness, swelling, warmth or discharge is not, and warrants medical attention.
Sharps disposal
Used needles go into an approved sharps container, never into household rubbish or recycling. When the container reaches its fill line, dispose of it through whatever route your state provides — pharmacy take-back, household hazardous waste collection, or a mail-back program.
Disposal rules are set at state level and vary considerably. Check your own state's requirements rather than assuming.