Drugs! Legal ones!

[zdashamber]

Head cold today. I broke down and gave DayQuil another shot and it doesn't enormously suck, but man. Well... It might not be a fair shot, since this is the same DayQuil that I tried more than 7 years ago (and decided at the time, "meh"). See, I checked the expiration date, which is in 2003. And then I thought about it for a bit, and decided

Comments

[jimhenley]

Non-nerfed NyQuil remains available Behind The Counter, if you're willing to suffer the ritual humiliation meted out to pseudoephedrine purchasers. (Show license; sign book; act like this shit is perfectly reasonable.)

[nuadha_prime]

I also recently discovered Dayquil and Nyquil. They are amazing. My experience with the post-con funk this year was a lot less nasty than usual thanks to the Quils.

[beth_leonard]

I never take drugs much myself either, only the occasional single regular strength Tylenol if I start having menstral cramps. I've found if I medicate that early, I don't have any problems, but if I let it go, nothing really helps.

Friends of mine swore by Tums while they were pregnant for the heartburn, but I never had any heartburn so I didn't use them.

I took either a benadryl or a claritin the year I had a massive allergic reaction to my Halloween costume. It seemed to solve the problem, and things were bad enough then that I was making "drive me to the ER" plans if it didn't work.

[zdashamber]

With the migraines, it's the same for me: unless you hit them before they sink in, painkillers won't do much good.

My doctor told me to use Prilosec propylactically if I felt like another ulcer might be coming on, but I never felt that they did much...

What kind of allergic reaction?

[motleypolitico]

There's a bunch of tummy tamers that work well. Prilosec isn't bad, and there's a generic I think called omeprazole and I don't recall which of the 'brand name' tummy tamers that is, but it's the one that works best for me.

Zyrtec is a good allergy med - works better for me than Claritin, which really requires a few days to do a whole lot of good for me.

Opcon-A is actually a decent eyedrop for acute 'I'm scratching my eyes out and nothing else helps' allergies.

For migraines, it's two mugs of double-strength coffee and 3-4 Excedrin (yes, Excedrin specifically).

Pepto Bismol works wonders on me, but not on a lot of other folks.

Ibuprofen for most types of pain, 3-4 tablets for anti-inflammatory if you want to help with the underlying cause rather than just acting as a painkiller.

Benadryl as a sleep aid - it doesn't necessarily do that much else for me, but as a sleep aid? Unparalleled.

[amanda_lodden]

The connective tissue of your intestines being twisted is probably gas, especially if it goes away after you've passed gas in some form (burps count).

Pseudoephedrine is the best drug known to man, and totally worth the hassle at the pharmacy counter to obtain your over-the-counter drug. Mind you, that hassle makes me hate the DEA even more than I usually do, but... for congestion, nothing beats pseudoephedrine. For colds or drippy sinuses, I typically couple it with Robitussin (daytime) and NyQuil (nighttime)-- DayQuil just doesn't do much for me. Since I take my pseudoephedrine in pill form, I don't usually worry about it not being in the cough syrup. If I really really feel like crap, TheraFlu goes into the mix, but it's nasty shit and I try to avoid it if I'm still functional.

For muscle aches, ibuprofen of some sort (Advil, Motrin, generic, whatever). Tylenol is only good for headaches and severe pain, and if you're taking it for headaches you may as well get the caffeine and aspirin that's in Excedrin too.

[curgoth]

Legal drugs I carry around in my backpack;
* advil cold+sinus (pseudoephedrine + advil; dayquil uses tylenol, which is more strongly counterindicated with alcohol)
* robaxacet (methacarbonal, a muscle relaxant, + advil, which is a non-steroid anti-infalmmatory - when you really, really need to deal with muscle cramps, strains and pains.) This is scrip-only in the US, off the shelf in Canada.
* gravol (anti-nauseant, also causing drowsiness if one can't sleep)
* benedryl (strong anti-allergen, related to gravol, causing similar sleepiness)
* tylenol quick release (in case I'm in enough pain that I want to double up with advil)
* advil
* immodium (anti-diahhrea. Rarely needed, but when you need it...)

I also take either claritin or advair daily (non-drowsy antihistamine, since I am allergic to dust and pollen, meaning that it's always allergy season for me).

I think by this point my bloodstream is 50% after market parts.