[snarfle]

[altivo]

The cold is worse, low grade fever and very congested, but probably nothing really serious. Still, it saps all my energy. A good chunk of the day was spent on the sofa with a plush pony, doing nothing other than dozing occasionally.

It's time to cancel the stupid "war on drugs" started by the Reagan administration. It hasn't worked. The only effect I can see is that it has made it so much more difficult to buy a decent over the counter decongestant, because you might be using it as an ingredient in home made meth, see. So it's your patriotic duty to put up with a head full of rubber cement for several days where you used to be able to clear it up easily with just one little pill. The stuff marketed in place of pseudoephedrine simply doesn't work at all or at least nowhere near as well.

Tess got to go out this afternoon. I think that's all I accomplished for the entire day. At this rate, I foresee a day off work tomorrow.

Comments

[frith]

Hunh. Come on up to Canada. I have this over-the-counter stuff called Drixoral that contains 120 mg of pseudoephedrine sulfate in each pill. I never use the stuff. I bought it for wax build-up in my ear a few years ago. I ate one pill, there are nine left. Expired in March 2008.

[altivo]

Heh. I'd love to come up to Canada for a visit or maybe even permanently. Unfortunately that's not so easy to do when you have land and livestock to take care of. But thanks.

We can get pseudoephedrine here. There are two catches. They've doubled the price from what it used to be, and in order to buy it you have to be "registered" as a purchaser, just as if you were buying prescription narcotics. I refuse to do that.

Fortunately, this cold has now largely gone by I think. All I have left at the moment is a minor cough. I also learned that the phenylephrine that they let us buy freely does work if used as a topical decongestant. You can get it in a little spray bottle, and just one spritz opens up my sinuses and everything for a couple of hours.

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

No Freeport for you next weekend?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Actually, the War on Drugs was started in the Nixon administration though as originally envisioned credit it actually made some sense then, having a significant component be rehabilitation. I do agree that the War on Drugs (or War on Some Drugs as I've seen it put) has been as counter-productive as Prohibition and has about the same solution. Also, phenylephrine seems not to work at the recommended dosage, at least when taken orally, and has never been tested for safety at higher dosage. As far as I am concerned it's an overpriced placebo.

[drgnkiyo.livejournal.com]

I think I've had a mild cold or something similar over the past few days. Random cough, lots of sneezing, runny nose, feel completely drained most of the time, etc. Just no fever (that I'm aware of.)

I hope you get better soon.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

I'm not fond of the war on drugs either. I think tobacco and alcohol should be more tightly regulated, marijuana less so (maybe make all 3 at about the same level).

When it comes to something like Meth, though, I really can't fathom easing up. Not only is meth medically dangerous for its abusers, but its production in basement laboratories has been known to cause explosions and can make the house itself dangerously toxic even years after the meth makers get thrown in jail.

[deffox]

The decongestant substitute has been long proven not to work in clinical trials.

Go to the pharmacist and get the real psuedoephidrine. They still carry it. Though last time I got some in the US they gave me a bit of hassle because they didn't know how to enter my postal code into their tracking database.

[cats-haven.livejournal.com]

Aww, I think I had the same just a couple of weeks ago. Felt like ick for severals days before I finally kicked the worst of it. Spent most of my days off laying on the couch snoozing between commercials. Hope you get over it soon.

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I never found a better decongestant than standing on the manure pile. Ammonia fumes are the shit, pun intended. ;)

Our manure pile tends to be too dry for that, since the horses are only indoors during the winter, but back when I was riding at the riding school... Oh man.


-Alexandra

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

Hot tea and whisky.
I don't really know if it works, but I feel better.

[felder.livejournal.com]

Awww, get well soon hon *snuggles*

You can still get pseudoephedrine over the counter here, but in small amounts. you're only allowed to buy it at pharmacy's though.

*cuddles*

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Hot tea and whisky.

And hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget about the hot tea! ^.~

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Hmm, you can't get pseudoephedrine at all, or just not as an OTC drug?

But yeah, the war on some drugs is definitely stupid and ineffective - at least if the goal really is to crack down on some drugs and their effects (which I sometimes doubt it really is).

[flamekist.livejournal.com]

I second this idea; go to the pharmacist and get the real thing. No prescription needed. The new stuff on the shelf is just a pretty placebo.

[murakozi.livejournal.com]

I hope you're feeling better soon.

The war on drugs thing is mostly just for show. I find it rather silly that I have to go to the pharmacy counter to get OTC cold meds, yet I can go and pick up all sorts of matches from a shelf a few aisles away. After all, meth lab folk do sometimes use matchbooks as a source of some of their materials.

I miss pseudoephredine. Even with the risks for which it was pulled off the market, I still prefer it to the replacement, which does a whole lot of nothing for me.

Hotwings...

[equusmaximus.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear about your cold, and the lack of decent medicine, but Alexandra makes a great point; Nothing seems to clear the sinuses like the burning stench of ammonia. I've also found that a steaming hot plate of hot-wings has much the same effect, and is a lot nicer to deal with. ;)

[typographer.livejournal.com]

I had one day like that last week with this cold... which I thought was gone, but decided to kick up another day of icky sinuses yesterday. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually I've found that phenylephrine does work, just not when taken orally. You can get it in a nasal spray at 1% concentration. For me at least, one good squirt clears things up nicely for a couple of hours.

The problem was that they tell you to use it only once every four hours. Then I realized that I'm using less than half the recommended dose, so I went ahead and used it every two hours. Perfect results without the light headed feeling from pseudoephrine.

I agree that the oral dose doesn't seem to do much of anything. But many of the "modern" drugs, like Claritin(tm) and Afrin(tm) do nothing for me.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I had something similar about a month back, so I was surprised to get this. That time there was no fever though, so I guess it's a different variant.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We never get ammonia from our manure, probably in part because we don't feed any alfalfa. When I've been forced to use hay with alfalfa, then the ammonia shows up but usually in the stalls rather than in the manure pile.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Eww. No thanks. ;p

[altivo.livejournal.com]

My mother swore by lemon and honey with whisky in it for a cough. For the sore throat and upset stomach, though, she made us drink Vernor's ginger ale that had been heated to near boiling.

If you haven't had Vernor's, it's more like a strong ginger beer than the usual pale ginger ales are. It's a deep yellow in color and has so much ginger in it that it burns to swallow it. Michigan folks grow up on it and are surprised that all ginger ale is not the same.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, we can buy it here too. But in order to do so you have to be treated like some sort of suspect in a criminal case, and provide identification so they can log the fact that you bought it, and how much. I refuse to be treated as guilty until proven innocent, so I won't cooperate with that. The prices have been doubled as well.

*hugs back* Feeling a little better now, hopefully it's letting go.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You can still get it, but you have to go through all sorts of hoops with identification and allowing your purchase to be recorded in a logbook as if you were buying narcotics. I don't like being treated as guilty until proven innocent, so I won't do it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I found that phenylephrine does work when applied topically. Look for it in a nasal spray. That clears my head in a matter of seconds.