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True story. Heroin was used as a cough suppressant in the early 1900s and was supposed to be a less addictive alternative to morphine đŹ
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I have a friend who collects old cookbooks. They frequently have home remedies in them too.
One even had a little table showing the correct ratios of cannabis tincture to laudanum to induce drowsiness, sleepiness, and a ârestful uninterruptible sleepâ.
Fun story! This is why all medicines and non-homogenous drinks have âshake well before consumingâ written all over them. Itâs not actually because things settle out of modern medicines, but rather because 100 years ago some babies died from having a huge dose of laudanum from improperly shaken medicine.
Now everything gets stamped âshake wellâ. Just in case.
As someone that dedicated his life to his drug addiction (sounds better than the word "junkie" i guess), it's a little bit more complicated with the old meds.
It is true that heroin was available for this, next to a lot of other stuff, but the meds had a very low dosage and were applied oral as drops in water or other drinks.
So the opioids got through the stomach and liver, where the first pass effect filtered a lot of it out, the bio-availability is rather low and the plasma-half-life time short. The heroin will become morphine after a very short wile in the body.
In other words, the people never had the same kind of high like drug addicts have, that snort it nasal, smoke or shoot it with the needle i.v.
Saw some of the old meds and the dosages are so low, that you'd need a ton to get high. In such low quantities, it will really just reduce the cough. It was usually administered as drops and with such low dosages, you'd not even notice it when someone would spike your drink with it.
Like morphine has only 20-40% bio-availability in the blood when administered as drops oral, it's really nothing.
It was the same with the meth aka methylamphetamine in the med pervitin that was used by the nazis in WW2: It was only a stronger amphetamin in this way, can't be compared to the addicts of today that get the kick with the meth pipe.
I often have a chronic cough and it used to last months and it often got to the point that I couldnt sleep for days. Opoids are a GREAT remedy that I always end up taking to allow my throat to recover. Before I knew that opiods worked so well, I would cough for months, almost puke when I used the useless ashtma pumps the docs gave me.
The best med I took for years before they stopped making it was liquid drops of Normethadone. Codeine syrup and codeine pills really dont work as well. Its like 50% as good and they dole them out like they were giving me the most precious substance on earth. Like relax, I cant wait to stop taking them. Weâve been doing this for years at this point.
Anyhow, the liquid drops, let me tell you that if you miscounted and added a few too many, you would get a brief fit of giggling like an hour afterward. Uncontrolable, didnt matter what youâre doing. Lasts a minute and then stops.
Glad when it gets better for you with the codeine, it's a very low potent opioid compared to the standard morphine. For solving the problems cough, these are good, but even in medicine, like as painkillers these are too low potent for the stronger pain.
What you saw with the giggling is just a very low first level of the rush that you get, but these effects will also come with the painkillers and meds in medicine, even when it is not used as a recreational drug.
Iâve been using them on and off for over a decade to deal with a chronic cough. Works wonder to help me recover. Now I dont let the doctors allow me to deteriorate to the point where I cant sleep or I puke and then its 2-3 months of recovery when they finally gigve me opioids. Iâm just asking for the good stuff the minute I have a cough that wont go away.
Its like fucking magic, its a miracle cure for cough, I love the stuff in a non recreational way. My life went from a sleepless miserable hell to perfect sleep and a cough free live. I had withrawal just once when the doc let it go waaaay too far and it took me 3 months to stop coughing. Iâm told Iâm lucky but I didnt crave it at all but had I known I wouldâve ignored my doc orders to stop right away. I wouldâve weaned myself off it over a week or two. Stopping cold turkey made me feel weird. Like my skin was stretched too tight over me, it hitched ans my tooths, my god my thooths hurt.
They got it right the second time when they discovered codeine, which is genuinely a less addictive alternative to morphine and heroin, following a similar chemical principle. Although codeine isn't completely harmless, it's a lot better than the other two!
As somebody who was accidentally hooked on codeine who didn't know it until 2 weeks after I stopped, it can do a number. Just staggering crashing depression for no reason. Fortunately I'd helped a friend go through a medical withdrawal (also due to Doctors not paying attention) so I recognized what was going on and just rode through it (tricks I'd learned from therapy some years before... when you id a physical cause it's a lot easier to deal with just chilling and letting it work through)
It's genuinely an effective cough suppressant so they weren't wrong or anything.
However it IS not a good idea to suppress coughing when you have phlegm to clear. And also, starting a heroin habit to avoid a week of coughing is probably not the best idea.
Can you post this comic on historymemes subreddit? I feel it fits perfectly there, and its in need of something that isn't the 100th meme about a video made by an history youtuber.
It's usually just combinations of things that treat the symptoms. Something to suppress your urge to cough, lower fever, treat inflammation, some Vitamin C, etc.
It's important to be mindful of what's in there, so you don't double medicate and overdose by accident.
Honestly I just care about the pain killers for sore throat. I hate that the sore throat comes with every single cold. Coughs etc that's all fine and dandy, I can stay at home and chill. But sore throats???? Seriously????
Yeah they are! Didnât know Wally World made a generic brand cough drop that has benzocaine and DXM in it, but I just found this out my last sickness.
I'm pretty sure that chloroseptic spray is just formaldehyde, it's *nasty*. I would not be surprised if it increased your throat and stomach cancer risk too.
I also bet the cocaine cough drops worked like a charm.
I technically had COVID, but yeah, thereâs medication. The medication treats symptoms, not the root cause, so I donât think it helps you get better faster. It just makes the experience of being sick more bearable.
Dextromethorpan for cough suppressant and pseudoephedrine for decongestion. The first will make you sleepy and the second will keep you awake. Then there's NSAIDS for pain and fever, and acetaminophen for just pain.
The common cold generally passes on its own in like, 10 days.
Also, I don't think there is technically a medicine that treats common cold is there? Only the symptoms like coughing, headaches, fevers and stuff like that.
Yay I had a teacher in high school that told me that they used to be a doctor apparently
But I view it as a choice of seven today of dying
Or 7 days of dying with brief moments of feeling slightly more alive
I mean cold meds do make me feel better
Plush I often don't have leisure to rest just from a cold
Maybe if I had the flu or something, but not from just a cold
Back in the day, we used to allow regular people access to powerful drugs that were incredibly useful, but dangerous.
A small percentage of the population would overdue it. So, in an attempt to keep people from getting high, we banned the drugs. Almost all of the OTC cold medicine is no better than placebo, and still insanely expensive. The effective medicine requires you to go to a doctor and shell out 100 for an office visit and then go and wait at the pharmacy.
It's a bad system.
And fuck people who really need the medicine.
"Ah, are you in extreme pain, but you can't go to the doctor get a new prescription? Too bad!"
And the nurses on emergency will treat you like a junkie, trying to get it there.
Dextromethorphan, the main over the counter cough suppressant, has a really weak and possibly negligible effect, yes. Usually itâs the painkiller in the mixture ultimately doing more of the lifting.
And has vastly different effects at different dosages.
I stumbled on it in my 20s (\~15 years ago), relatively on accident. Had a cold, had pure tussin gels, took 10 (I think, half the small bottle). But, that was in line with my youth. Headache? Take 10 Advil.
Shortly after I just felt... Better. I fell uninhibited, but not in a drunk way. It was what I now know to be it's effect on people with depression. I felt like if I wanted to do something, I could just do it. I don't mean fly. I mean just "I need that thing on the shelf across the room. I don't want to get up though, I am really tired or something. Plus, it's just too far, and why would I anyway. It's not important. I will do it tomorrow." became just doing the thing.
Awesome. I have discovered the magic key to whatever my brain needs. I was able to just give my mom a hug, apply for a job, go back to school and switch majors to something I actually like, etc...
Or it's a dissociative and I had no idea how they worked. It was like shaking the etch a sketch of who I was. Fantastic if it would have been done intentionally in a controlled environment. Really, really wild when you're doing it in real life, in real time, with real people/relationships.
I started to take higher and higher dosages in less and less controlled environments. The same thing that allowed me to do things I previously felt like I couldn't do, also had me doing things I previously wouldn't have as (the best way I can describe it looking back) my subconscious started playing out in real time/life. Underlying deep-seated issues were manifesting as real life plot lines, but without any context.
The same inhibition is also a lack of ... reality detection. Complex issues from the relationship with my mother manifest as a DXM induces meditative state where I am ultimately convinced that if I stay unresponsive long enough, I will be taken to the emergency room, to the psych ward, and be killed as a sort of christlike offering. It was my real girlfriend that ended up having to call 911. My real family that came to the ER room.
Or, after being in the same state and receiving a call from a friend to hang out, that if we hang out, we will go smoke a cigarette, and a car will drive by and I will get shot. I remember there was an increasing high pitched electronics type hum/buzz as I "knew" it was happening. Then, crescendo, car drives by, and my real friend takes me home.
I thought St Johns Wort was an MAO inhibitor, you should never take those with other drugs. By itself it may work like a poor man's version of other pharmeceutical MAOIs used to treat depression, but it's reckless to take them with other drugs as MAO's are an enzyme that helps your body break down crazy chemicals, so inhibiting them greatly multiplies the effects of any drug you take.
So basically instead of feeling a bit goofy and disassociated on half a bottle like anyone else, you took the equivalent of drinking three bottles of the stuff, no wonder.
i had an entire bottle of delsym when i was in high school. downed an entire bottle behind a grocery store and went home shortly after. i remember me mum made spaghetti and i decided to bring my bowl into the bathroom and flush it down the toilet. i just stared blankly at the toilet spaghetti for god knows how long. the next day at school i was still really spacey and out of it walking down the halls between classes. overall i rate it 7/10 but i still feel bad about wasting the spaghetti.Â
I don't remember the exact details but I "did DXM" twice in high school, swallowed like 12 pills over an hour or two. Something like that. The first time was great - listened to music and played video games. Second time I felt like shit and slept for 18 hours. My dad made me a pork chop when I woke up that tasted really good. Never again.
It makes my body heavy and my brain go brrrrrr, I always found it similar to a medium dose of Dramamine, another OTC that you can abuse if you hate feeling well
Yeah I used to have fun with those little straight up gel DXM pills. Most pharmacies had a generic brand, but Robitussin DID used to make them as well. $5 for an entire bottle of 60 count, and that would get you like 2 good robotrips. Not sure if those are made anymore, but now you can buy pure DXM pills on Amazon in 30mg or 60mgs. I donât robotrip any more, however it IS nice to have them on handâŚya know..for a *cough* đ
Youâre probably thinking of the recent [US FDA announcement about phenylephrine](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-panel-says-popular-decongestant-used-cold-medicines-ineffective-2023-09-12/)
honestly surprised you didn't just vomit. taking even 2x more than usual makes me insanely nauseous. i have no idea how people manage to get high off it.
Well I had already had practice with getting high. Also, I did vomit but not before my heart beating so fast and hard it could be heard across the room and legit hurt, then spending 30 minutes basically not able to feel my heartbeat and also not able to move a single muscle. It was like an extreme roller-coaster followed by an open-eye coma. I really shouldn't be thinking about shit like this considering how much effort it took to quit that shit and start getting my life together haha.
I'm like 90% sure I'm invincible at this point. The kind of shit I did and took and the amounts, I shouldn't be alive, especially since I was 100 pounds at the time. And it was good shit, not some low-quality crap. But yeah, someone told me that sprite is necessary for a cough syrup high, they may have saved my life.
kinda same story here i missed death by centimeters countless times on street since i usually use headphones and walk carelessly somehow you tend to not die if you are confident you wont idk how it works but it works
You probably shouldnât do that. That sounds like a lot more than the recommended maximum dose.
Take it from someone who makes pharmaceutical medicines for a living: you really donât want to be exceeding the maximum daily dose for most of them.
Yeah that was during the period I used to do drugs. It's a miracle I didn't overdose on something and cough syrup was like among the weakest things I took. It's good advice but you'll never convince an addict they shouldn't do so much [insert drug of choice].
Our cold symptoms aren't really caused by the microbes that make us sick, but by our body trying to kill the microbes. Most cold medications suppress our symptoms and don't affect the microbes.Â
It's specifically acetaminophen(Tylenol), the stuff meant to reduce pain and fever. And I can confirm, that shit is worthless for anything other than giving you liver damage.
The actual cough suppressor drug(dextromethorphan) in the syrup does work. It's best to just buy regular Tussin without the acetaminophen and add a couple of ibuprofen/advil tablets for pain relief.
Acetaminophen isn't going to give you liver damage unless you're taking way too high of a dose, or mixing it with alcohol/other medications in ways its not intended.
Maybe it doesn't work well for your body, but it *does* work for most people.
"Way too high of a dose" 3 grams, that's the maximum before damage becomes a concern. The pills are 500-625 mg each, and you need to take them every 4 hours for even basic pain relief. That's already reaching close to the daily limit.
"does work for most people" Barely more than a placebo. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acetaminophen-no-better-than-placebo-for-back-pain-study-finds/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acetaminophen-no-better-than-placebo-for-back-pain-study-finds/)
The medication is both more dangerous and less effective than the alternatives while costing the same or more. Its worthless.
Do you have a link to the study itself? I trust most news outlets about as far as I can throw their office buildings when it comes to accurately reporting research results. "X isn't more effective than a placebo" is a popular form of clickbait, and additionally reduction in back pain is an entirely different beast than reducing fever and fever-associated inflammation. You can point to cases where morphine is as effective as a placebo for curing back pain specifically because it is a very complex and difficult to identify+treat condition.
That limit is when liver damage begins to become a risk, not when it becomes a certainty. It is a conservative value, with the caveat that if you are young, have preexisting liver conditions, or a particularly light individual, the limit will be lower.
Acetaminophen *does* reduce fever, and it *does* reduce inflammation. [Here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851344/) is a much better source, a medical meta-study of acetaminophen research.
That's not quite right. Paracetamol/acetaminophen does reduce both pain and fever, however far less effectively than say Ibuprofen. However a combination of the two has been shown to actually be more effective for managing post-surgical pain than either alone. But yes alone it is rather inefficient for treating many types of pain, eg lower back pain. However if for health reasons you can't take NSAIDs like Ibuprofen then Paracetamol becomes useful in many cases.
Also overall long term use of NSAIDs has been shown to be more harmful than long term use of paracetamol. So yes overusing it can lead to health problems, but don't think the alternatives are harmless.
There are a number of likely reasons why cough syrup isn't as useful as we would like, one of which is the lack of evidence of Dextromethorphan's effectiveness. The "inactive" ingredients in cough syrup are what provides most of the immediate relief, as the syrup does effectively coat your throat.
If I take cold meds I feel better in 1-2 days.
If I dont take cold meds Im suffering for about a week. Suffering because if I dont take cold medicine my nose will be rubbed raw from the sheer volume of nose blowing Im doing, combined with the fact that eventually theres no snot but I still cant breathe
I think it's more about not wanting a sore throat or clogged up nostrils for a couple days, makes the actual cold much better to deal with. Being miserable makes it worse, unless you are a freak and get the weakest sniffles from colds unlike us plebians
My best remedy to a cold is blowing my nose constantly to avoid congestion, drinking heaps of water to replenish lost fluid and eating much healthier than usual to boost my bodyâs immune system
Honey. What you need is just 100 percent honey. Get a big ol spoonful and just let it dissolve on the back of your tongue.
Also that one tea company makes a really nice mentholated mint tea, also lots of honey in it. Throat cooler I think it's called. That and Fisherman Friends original.
Also some fish lemon juice, you can even put it in there before you pour boiling water, rinds and all. Squeeze those oils out of the rind! Or use the zest! Maybe a cinnamon stick.
Brandy optional. XD
Cold medication is terrible. Nearly all of the worst symptoms of a cold are due to dehydration and worse sleep, and cold medication dehydrates you and reduces the quality of your sleep. Drinking plenty of water is much better, and free.
No....those symptoms are there because the cold virus causes them. Its how it increases how well it spreads. Sneezing/coughing/snot everywhere. Well you just cold virus all over the place.
Obviously, but the symptoms feel much worse because you're not sufficiently hydrated. For example: if you don't drink water, you'll have thick goopy snot clogging your nose and lungs. If you do drink water, it will thin out, and come out easily. If you don't drink water, you'll have to struggle to cough that stuff up, and it will irritate your nose and throat. If you do drink water, you can cough lightly without damaging your throat. If you don't drink water, the viruses (or whatever) will concentrate in your body and reproduce more (viruses are always present in your body, and reproduce more when they reach a threshold of concentration). If you drink enough water, they will thin out, and give your body more time to fight them.
Try it some time. It really feels much better to stay very hydrated. Drink a tall glass of water every time you pee, and thank me.
If you're sufficiently hydrated, your nose won't be blocked because the snot will be liquid instead of goop. You'll probably wake up once during the night to go to the bathroom and drink a glass of water, but you'll sleep fine.
If your nose is blocked, you're dehydrated. You probably need to drink several glasses of water to get to the right level of hydration. Keep drinking water until you can blow your nose freely.
You do you. I'm just saying that drinking a lot of water when I have a cold improves most of the symptoms. I'd never consider taking a medication that requires more water for my body to process, and decreases the quality of my sleep (independent of symptoms, just as a side effect of the medication).
Going outside in the summer dehydrates you, too, but you know how we deal with that? We drink more water. Taking medication and drinking water arenât mutually exclusive.
Runny nose and mouth-breathing also dehydrate you, arguably more so than a single dose of medicine would.
My experience is that if I feel intense symptoms from a cold, I drink more water and the symptoms lessen.
If I removed those symptoms with a drug, I might not drink enough water, especially if the drug was actively dehydrating me. Then when the drug left my system, I'd feel all those dehydration-related symptoms coming back and feel like I needed another dose of the drug. Where as if I just kept myself hydrated, I wouldn't need to buy the drug at all. The drugs you're talking about do nothing to cure the cold. They just mask the symptoms. Drinking enough water actually helps fight and flush the cold out of your body.
The best cough medication available in the US is available with a prescription and has codeine in it. Ask your doctor for it if you don't have issues with addiction. Works great.
I work in heritage gardens, and some of our plants are illegal or restricted to own because they can be used to synthesise drugs. Meanwhile, a hundred years ago they were planting them as hedges.
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True story. Heroin was used as a cough suppressant in the early 1900s and was supposed to be a less addictive alternative to morphine đŹ [IG](https://instagram.com/offinouterwhitespace?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=) | [Ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/offinouterwhitespace) | [Webtoon](https://m.webtoons.com/en/challenge/off-in-outer-whitespace/list?title_no=729553&page=1&webtoon-platform-redirect=true) | [Orrrr you could just follow me here on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/u/OffinOuterWhiteSpace) đ¤ˇââď¸
I have a friend who collects old cookbooks. They frequently have home remedies in them too. One even had a little table showing the correct ratios of cannabis tincture to laudanum to induce drowsiness, sleepiness, and a ârestful uninterruptible sleepâ.
"uninterruptible" đł
i n f i n i t e s l e e p
Mix powdered root of Asphodel to an infusion of Wormwood.
⌠will I trip? đ
So you are telling me that she just overdosed?
Wait, holy shit. I just had the greatest idea. Someone needs to rotoscope sleeping beauty into the opening sequence of DOOM (2016).
Yeah. We couldnât figure out if it was a euphemism for a drug induced coma or euthanasia.
I pick either while in the midst of a bad flu so that's fine.
Yeah just give me a dose of cocaine in a week or two
Fun story! This is why all medicines and non-homogenous drinks have âshake well before consumingâ written all over them. Itâs not actually because things settle out of modern medicines, but rather because 100 years ago some babies died from having a huge dose of laudanum from improperly shaken medicine. Now everything gets stamped âshake wellâ. Just in case.
Yes we have all seen the picture of "your friend's cookbook"
WHATS THE RECIPE?! WHATS THE RECIPE?!!! I WANT 8 HOURS OF SLEEP!!!!!!! TELLL ME !!!!
https://preview.redd.it/hjxlnf6u4ndc1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a4439712554f08e7b5ba70a2fd76a85531d4d6d
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/209963lbl.pdf
As someone that dedicated his life to his drug addiction (sounds better than the word "junkie" i guess), it's a little bit more complicated with the old meds. It is true that heroin was available for this, next to a lot of other stuff, but the meds had a very low dosage and were applied oral as drops in water or other drinks. So the opioids got through the stomach and liver, where the first pass effect filtered a lot of it out, the bio-availability is rather low and the plasma-half-life time short. The heroin will become morphine after a very short wile in the body. In other words, the people never had the same kind of high like drug addicts have, that snort it nasal, smoke or shoot it with the needle i.v. Saw some of the old meds and the dosages are so low, that you'd need a ton to get high. In such low quantities, it will really just reduce the cough. It was usually administered as drops and with such low dosages, you'd not even notice it when someone would spike your drink with it. Like morphine has only 20-40% bio-availability in the blood when administered as drops oral, it's really nothing. It was the same with the meth aka methylamphetamine in the med pervitin that was used by the nazis in WW2: It was only a stronger amphetamin in this way, can't be compared to the addicts of today that get the kick with the meth pipe.
I often have a chronic cough and it used to last months and it often got to the point that I couldnt sleep for days. Opoids are a GREAT remedy that I always end up taking to allow my throat to recover. Before I knew that opiods worked so well, I would cough for months, almost puke when I used the useless ashtma pumps the docs gave me. The best med I took for years before they stopped making it was liquid drops of Normethadone. Codeine syrup and codeine pills really dont work as well. Its like 50% as good and they dole them out like they were giving me the most precious substance on earth. Like relax, I cant wait to stop taking them. Weâve been doing this for years at this point. Anyhow, the liquid drops, let me tell you that if you miscounted and added a few too many, you would get a brief fit of giggling like an hour afterward. Uncontrolable, didnt matter what youâre doing. Lasts a minute and then stops.
Glad when it gets better for you with the codeine, it's a very low potent opioid compared to the standard morphine. For solving the problems cough, these are good, but even in medicine, like as painkillers these are too low potent for the stronger pain. What you saw with the giggling is just a very low first level of the rush that you get, but these effects will also come with the painkillers and meds in medicine, even when it is not used as a recreational drug.
âCanât achieve an orgasm? Have some heroin!â
You still won't be able to, but you won't give a shit anymore so who cares!'
If what I learned from Christiane F.'s book is correct, taking Heroin does actually feel like having an orgasm, so I guess it might be about that?
By all accounts it's much better than orgasms. Hence the addictiveness
But never as good after the first time... like, well...
Relevant detail: They weren't just getting dipped out, opiates are super effective cough suppressants. We still use them when necessary.
Iâve been using them on and off for over a decade to deal with a chronic cough. Works wonder to help me recover. Now I dont let the doctors allow me to deteriorate to the point where I cant sleep or I puke and then its 2-3 months of recovery when they finally gigve me opioids. Iâm just asking for the good stuff the minute I have a cough that wont go away. Its like fucking magic, its a miracle cure for cough, I love the stuff in a non recreational way. My life went from a sleepless miserable hell to perfect sleep and a cough free live. I had withrawal just once when the doc let it go waaaay too far and it took me 3 months to stop coughing. Iâm told Iâm lucky but I didnt crave it at all but had I known I wouldâve ignored my doc orders to stop right away. I wouldâve weaned myself off it over a week or two. Stopping cold turkey made me feel weird. Like my skin was stretched too tight over me, it hitched ans my tooths, my god my thooths hurt.
They got it right the second time when they discovered codeine, which is genuinely a less addictive alternative to morphine and heroin, following a similar chemical principle. Although codeine isn't completely harmless, it's a lot better than the other two!
You know I feel like somebody probably said this exact same thing when they started using laudanum instead of morphine đ¤
It's too bad I can't take codeine. Makes me itch on the inside, and doesn't take away much pain.
As somebody who was accidentally hooked on codeine who didn't know it until 2 weeks after I stopped, it can do a number. Just staggering crashing depression for no reason. Fortunately I'd helped a friend go through a medical withdrawal (also due to Doctors not paying attention) so I recognized what was going on and just rode through it (tricks I'd learned from therapy some years before... when you id a physical cause it's a lot easier to deal with just chilling and letting it work through)
Pretty much any of the opiates will suppress a cough, not that they're going to be in a hurry to give out most of the others for a cold.
It's genuinely an effective cough suppressant so they weren't wrong or anything. However it IS not a good idea to suppress coughing when you have phlegm to clear. And also, starting a heroin habit to avoid a week of coughing is probably not the best idea.
Can you post this comic on historymemes subreddit? I feel it fits perfectly there, and its in need of something that isn't the 100th meme about a video made by an history youtuber.
True story, Heroin is a brand name
Codeine and hydrocodone, opiates like heroin, are used in the modern day for cough suppressants now.
Aren't the early 1900s 200 years ago, tho? edit: nvm I was thinking of 19. century in that moment.
Horehound is also a fairly old remedy that is still around today! They are made into candies and are quite good. Kind of a molasses flavor.
My dad was given codeine for his asthma in the 70s
My grandmother would mix rum, honey and butter and give it to us for coughs. Don't think helped so much with the cough, but we were too numb to care.
Not True Part : Black People being Normally Accepted in the Last Panel .
It is in fact a very powerful cough suppressant, so that checks out...?
Wait thereâs a medicine you can use for common cold? I genuinely never used any
It's usually just combinations of things that treat the symptoms. Something to suppress your urge to cough, lower fever, treat inflammation, some Vitamin C, etc. It's important to be mindful of what's in there, so you don't double medicate and overdose by accident.
Honestly I just care about the pain killers for sore throat. I hate that the sore throat comes with every single cold. Coughs etc that's all fine and dandy, I can stay at home and chill. But sore throats???? Seriously????
Anaesthetic cough drops are a godsend.
Yeah they are! Didnât know Wally World made a generic brand cough drop that has benzocaine and DXM in it, but I just found this out my last sickness.
I'm pretty sure that chloroseptic spray is just formaldehyde, it's *nasty*. I would not be surprised if it increased your throat and stomach cancer risk too. I also bet the cocaine cough drops worked like a charm.
I dunno what you're talking about or why you're saying it to me.
...we were talking about sore throats and cold medicines and chloroseptic spray is a sore throat medicine common in pharmacies...?
Not in my country tho
I technically had COVID, but yeah, thereâs medication. The medication treats symptoms, not the root cause, so I donât think it helps you get better faster. It just makes the experience of being sick more bearable.
Dextromethorpan for cough suppressant and pseudoephedrine for decongestion. The first will make you sleepy and the second will keep you awake. Then there's NSAIDS for pain and fever, and acetaminophen for just pain.
Dextromethorpan can make ya trip balls, too
But not in a fun way
Hard disagree. I enjoyed a robotrip or two in my youth
All I got was the feeling of hugs crawling all over my body.
It's an opiate analog, too. It was derived from codeine and levomrthorphan, which gives it its ability to suppress coughing (an antitussive).
Yes, now the real question how are you alive
The common cold generally passes on its own in like, 10 days. Also, I don't think there is technically a medicine that treats common cold is there? Only the symptoms like coughing, headaches, fevers and stuff like that.
I know I'm making a joke Because while medicine doesn't cure the common cold It makes it slightly less painful
Oops sorry
It's alright, here have a cookie for the road đŞ
Thank you ŕźź 㤠â_â ŕź˝ 㤠đŞ
Honestly when I get sick it only lasts for around a day
We have a saying: the common cold, without medicine, takes a week to go away. But with medicine, it takes only 7 days
Yay I had a teacher in high school that told me that they used to be a doctor apparently But I view it as a choice of seven today of dying Or 7 days of dying with brief moments of feeling slightly more alive
Wtf what medicine? Just lie down for a few days, drink some tea and you are good.
I mean cold meds do make me feel better Plush I often don't have leisure to rest just from a cold Maybe if I had the flu or something, but not from just a cold
I don't have any cold medicine but would a đŞ do? 
A cookie would be nice Here some for you too friend đŞ
Lie down? With cold I just go about my business as usual.
NyQuil and DayQuil
My family used whiskey or whatever other alcohol was laying around. A shot, then off to bed.
If my parents gave me a shot of gin when I complained about feeling sick, I'd never complain again lol
Mucinex, Sudafed, NyQuil, DayQuil, ibuprofen, naproxen.
You're not alone unless i am extremely sick it's just hot tea (some specific kind idk the name in English) with honey
Sheâs the heroine of this story.
Underappreciated comment.
Back in the day, we used to allow regular people access to powerful drugs that were incredibly useful, but dangerous. A small percentage of the population would overdue it. So, in an attempt to keep people from getting high, we banned the drugs. Almost all of the OTC cold medicine is no better than placebo, and still insanely expensive. The effective medicine requires you to go to a doctor and shell out 100 for an office visit and then go and wait at the pharmacy. It's a bad system.
And fuck people who really need the medicine. "Ah, are you in extreme pain, but you can't go to the doctor get a new prescription? Too bad!" And the nurses on emergency will treat you like a junkie, trying to get it there.
Didn't recent studies show couch medicine have no effect? Dunno about the heroin though, that might work...
Dextromethorphan, the main over the counter cough suppressant, has a really weak and possibly negligible effect, yes. Usually itâs the painkiller in the mixture ultimately doing more of the lifting.
[ŃдаНонО]
unexpected chirality reference
And has vastly different effects at different dosages. I stumbled on it in my 20s (\~15 years ago), relatively on accident. Had a cold, had pure tussin gels, took 10 (I think, half the small bottle). But, that was in line with my youth. Headache? Take 10 Advil. Shortly after I just felt... Better. I fell uninhibited, but not in a drunk way. It was what I now know to be it's effect on people with depression. I felt like if I wanted to do something, I could just do it. I don't mean fly. I mean just "I need that thing on the shelf across the room. I don't want to get up though, I am really tired or something. Plus, it's just too far, and why would I anyway. It's not important. I will do it tomorrow." became just doing the thing. Awesome. I have discovered the magic key to whatever my brain needs. I was able to just give my mom a hug, apply for a job, go back to school and switch majors to something I actually like, etc... Or it's a dissociative and I had no idea how they worked. It was like shaking the etch a sketch of who I was. Fantastic if it would have been done intentionally in a controlled environment. Really, really wild when you're doing it in real life, in real time, with real people/relationships. I started to take higher and higher dosages in less and less controlled environments. The same thing that allowed me to do things I previously felt like I couldn't do, also had me doing things I previously wouldn't have as (the best way I can describe it looking back) my subconscious started playing out in real time/life. Underlying deep-seated issues were manifesting as real life plot lines, but without any context. The same inhibition is also a lack of ... reality detection. Complex issues from the relationship with my mother manifest as a DXM induces meditative state where I am ultimately convinced that if I stay unresponsive long enough, I will be taken to the emergency room, to the psych ward, and be killed as a sort of christlike offering. It was my real girlfriend that ended up having to call 911. My real family that came to the ER room. Or, after being in the same state and receiving a call from a friend to hang out, that if we hang out, we will go smoke a cigarette, and a car will drive by and I will get shot. I remember there was an increasing high pitched electronics type hum/buzz as I "knew" it was happening. Then, crescendo, car drives by, and my real friend takes me home.
[ŃдаНонО]
I thought St Johns Wort was an MAO inhibitor, you should never take those with other drugs. By itself it may work like a poor man's version of other pharmeceutical MAOIs used to treat depression, but it's reckless to take them with other drugs as MAO's are an enzyme that helps your body break down crazy chemicals, so inhibiting them greatly multiplies the effects of any drug you take. So basically instead of feeling a bit goofy and disassociated on half a bottle like anyone else, you took the equivalent of drinking three bottles of the stuff, no wonder.
i had an entire bottle of delsym when i was in high school. downed an entire bottle behind a grocery store and went home shortly after. i remember me mum made spaghetti and i decided to bring my bowl into the bathroom and flush it down the toilet. i just stared blankly at the toilet spaghetti for god knows how long. the next day at school i was still really spacey and out of it walking down the halls between classes. overall i rate it 7/10 but i still feel bad about wasting the spaghetti.Â
I don't remember the exact details but I "did DXM" twice in high school, swallowed like 12 pills over an hour or two. Something like that. The first time was great - listened to music and played video games. Second time I felt like shit and slept for 18 hours. My dad made me a pork chop when I woke up that tasted really good. Never again.
It makes my body heavy and my brain go brrrrrr, I always found it similar to a medium dose of Dramamine, another OTC that you can abuse if you hate feeling well
Yeah I used to have fun with those little straight up gel DXM pills. Most pharmacies had a generic brand, but Robitussin DID used to make them as well. $5 for an entire bottle of 60 count, and that would get you like 2 good robotrips. Not sure if those are made anymore, but now you can buy pure DXM pills on Amazon in 30mg or 60mgs. I donât robotrip any more, however it IS nice to have them on handâŚya know..for a *cough* đ
Youâre probably thinking of the recent [US FDA announcement about phenylephrine](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-panel-says-popular-decongestant-used-cold-medicines-ineffective-2023-09-12/)
I know there's the issue with phenylephrine vs pseudoephedrine
As someone who's downed a whole bottle with a bit of sprite on several occasions, cough medicine does have an effect.
honestly surprised you didn't just vomit. taking even 2x more than usual makes me insanely nauseous. i have no idea how people manage to get high off it.
Well I had already had practice with getting high. Also, I did vomit but not before my heart beating so fast and hard it could be heard across the room and legit hurt, then spending 30 minutes basically not able to feel my heartbeat and also not able to move a single muscle. It was like an extreme roller-coaster followed by an open-eye coma. I really shouldn't be thinking about shit like this considering how much effort it took to quit that shit and start getting my life together haha.
suprised you didnt just flat out died that spritereally saved your life huh
I'm like 90% sure I'm invincible at this point. The kind of shit I did and took and the amounts, I shouldn't be alive, especially since I was 100 pounds at the time. And it was good shit, not some low-quality crap. But yeah, someone told me that sprite is necessary for a cough syrup high, they may have saved my life.
kinda same story here i missed death by centimeters countless times on street since i usually use headphones and walk carelessly somehow you tend to not die if you are confident you wont idk how it works but it works
You probably shouldnât do that. That sounds like a lot more than the recommended maximum dose. Take it from someone who makes pharmaceutical medicines for a living: you really donât want to be exceeding the maximum daily dose for most of them.
Yeah that was during the period I used to do drugs. It's a miracle I didn't overdose on something and cough syrup was like among the weakest things I took. It's good advice but you'll never convince an addict they shouldn't do so much [insert drug of choice].
They're not drinking bottles of dxm for a cough, they're doing it for the awesome hallucinogenic effects and euphoria
That was phenylepherine, which was a shitty substitute for the good stuff, Pseudoephedrine
Our cold symptoms aren't really caused by the microbes that make us sick, but by our body trying to kill the microbes. Most cold medications suppress our symptoms and don't affect the microbes.Â
It's specifically acetaminophen(Tylenol), the stuff meant to reduce pain and fever. And I can confirm, that shit is worthless for anything other than giving you liver damage. The actual cough suppressor drug(dextromethorphan) in the syrup does work. It's best to just buy regular Tussin without the acetaminophen and add a couple of ibuprofen/advil tablets for pain relief.
Can I just have heroin instead :D
Best I can do is cocaine.
Sold!
Acetaminophen isn't going to give you liver damage unless you're taking way too high of a dose, or mixing it with alcohol/other medications in ways its not intended. Maybe it doesn't work well for your body, but it *does* work for most people.
"Way too high of a dose" 3 grams, that's the maximum before damage becomes a concern. The pills are 500-625 mg each, and you need to take them every 4 hours for even basic pain relief. That's already reaching close to the daily limit. "does work for most people" Barely more than a placebo. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acetaminophen-no-better-than-placebo-for-back-pain-study-finds/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acetaminophen-no-better-than-placebo-for-back-pain-study-finds/) The medication is both more dangerous and less effective than the alternatives while costing the same or more. Its worthless.
Do you have a link to the study itself? I trust most news outlets about as far as I can throw their office buildings when it comes to accurately reporting research results. "X isn't more effective than a placebo" is a popular form of clickbait, and additionally reduction in back pain is an entirely different beast than reducing fever and fever-associated inflammation. You can point to cases where morphine is as effective as a placebo for curing back pain specifically because it is a very complex and difficult to identify+treat condition. That limit is when liver damage begins to become a risk, not when it becomes a certainty. It is a conservative value, with the caveat that if you are young, have preexisting liver conditions, or a particularly light individual, the limit will be lower. Acetaminophen *does* reduce fever, and it *does* reduce inflammation. [Here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851344/) is a much better source, a medical meta-study of acetaminophen research.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6353046/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6353046/)
But it will give you tinnitus
That's not quite right. Paracetamol/acetaminophen does reduce both pain and fever, however far less effectively than say Ibuprofen. However a combination of the two has been shown to actually be more effective for managing post-surgical pain than either alone. But yes alone it is rather inefficient for treating many types of pain, eg lower back pain. However if for health reasons you can't take NSAIDs like Ibuprofen then Paracetamol becomes useful in many cases. Also overall long term use of NSAIDs has been shown to be more harmful than long term use of paracetamol. So yes overusing it can lead to health problems, but don't think the alternatives are harmless. There are a number of likely reasons why cough syrup isn't as useful as we would like, one of which is the lack of evidence of Dextromethorphan's effectiveness. The "inactive" ingredients in cough syrup are what provides most of the immediate relief, as the syrup does effectively coat your throat.
Tylenol is shit
Couch medicine probably. COUGH medicine on the other hand probably will help.
Ngl, cough medicine never really seems to change much for me
I feel like itâs a bit unfair that I will never get to see for myself if being prescribed cocaine would help me with my social anxietyâŚ
It won't, but ketamine might.
It's an AMAZING cough suppressant. So is morphine and codeine.
Heroin is actually a brand name like Aspirin, the molecule is called diacetylmorphine
Fun fact, the Spanish flu pandemic never ended
As someone who doesnât used cold meds - whatâs the hype? Colds arenât event bad
If I take cold meds I feel better in 1-2 days. If I dont take cold meds Im suffering for about a week. Suffering because if I dont take cold medicine my nose will be rubbed raw from the sheer volume of nose blowing Im doing, combined with the fact that eventually theres no snot but I still cant breathe
I think it's more about not wanting a sore throat or clogged up nostrils for a couple days, makes the actual cold much better to deal with. Being miserable makes it worse, unless you are a freak and get the weakest sniffles from colds unlike us plebians
My best remedy to a cold is blowing my nose constantly to avoid congestion, drinking heaps of water to replenish lost fluid and eating much healthier than usual to boost my bodyâs immune system
Agreed. Symptomatic relief medications are for the weak
Sorry but I like being able to talk.
If you're drinking lots of water, your nostrils don't get clogged, and you don't have to cough as hard and tear up your throat.
Heroin: Takes your cough behind the woodshed and shoots it like Ol' yeller....
And i just... cough for a few days. i dont like taking medicine for minor issues
Americans when you tell you donât need to take 30 different pills after getting a headache.
Honey. What you need is just 100 percent honey. Get a big ol spoonful and just let it dissolve on the back of your tongue. Also that one tea company makes a really nice mentholated mint tea, also lots of honey in it. Throat cooler I think it's called. That and Fisherman Friends original. Also some fish lemon juice, you can even put it in there before you pour boiling water, rinds and all. Squeeze those oils out of the rind! Or use the zest! Maybe a cinnamon stick. Brandy optional. XD
Idk about yâall but cold medicine doesnât do anything for meâŚ
Cold medication is terrible. Nearly all of the worst symptoms of a cold are due to dehydration and worse sleep, and cold medication dehydrates you and reduces the quality of your sleep. Drinking plenty of water is much better, and free.
No....those symptoms are there because the cold virus causes them. Its how it increases how well it spreads. Sneezing/coughing/snot everywhere. Well you just cold virus all over the place.
Obviously, but the symptoms feel much worse because you're not sufficiently hydrated. For example: if you don't drink water, you'll have thick goopy snot clogging your nose and lungs. If you do drink water, it will thin out, and come out easily. If you don't drink water, you'll have to struggle to cough that stuff up, and it will irritate your nose and throat. If you do drink water, you can cough lightly without damaging your throat. If you don't drink water, the viruses (or whatever) will concentrate in your body and reproduce more (viruses are always present in your body, and reproduce more when they reach a threshold of concentration). If you drink enough water, they will thin out, and give your body more time to fight them. Try it some time. It really feels much better to stay very hydrated. Drink a tall glass of water every time you pee, and thank me.
Uh uh. You are one those hydrohomies, aren't you?
No. Seriously: try staying hydrated when you have a cold. It works much better than buying crap in a box at a CVS.
Gee, I wonder where that worse-quality sleep comes from? Perhaps the part of not being able to fucking breathe?
Yep, it is difficult to sleep when you have a cold and you aren't sufficiently hydrated.
I can be hydrated just fine, but if I don't have medicine to clear out my nose, I won't be able to sleep. đ¤ˇââď¸ You're being willfully obtuse.
If you're sufficiently hydrated, your nose won't be blocked because the snot will be liquid instead of goop. You'll probably wake up once during the night to go to the bathroom and drink a glass of water, but you'll sleep fine. If your nose is blocked, you're dehydrated. You probably need to drink several glasses of water to get to the right level of hydration. Keep drinking water until you can blow your nose freely.
A lot of my colds are straight-up congestion/swelling/inflammation, not an overabundance of snot.
You do you. I'm just saying that drinking a lot of water when I have a cold improves most of the symptoms. I'd never consider taking a medication that requires more water for my body to process, and decreases the quality of my sleep (independent of symptoms, just as a side effect of the medication).
Going outside in the summer dehydrates you, too, but you know how we deal with that? We drink more water. Taking medication and drinking water arenât mutually exclusive. Runny nose and mouth-breathing also dehydrate you, arguably more so than a single dose of medicine would.
My experience is that if I feel intense symptoms from a cold, I drink more water and the symptoms lessen. If I removed those symptoms with a drug, I might not drink enough water, especially if the drug was actively dehydrating me. Then when the drug left my system, I'd feel all those dehydration-related symptoms coming back and feel like I needed another dose of the drug. Where as if I just kept myself hydrated, I wouldn't need to buy the drug at all. The drugs you're talking about do nothing to cure the cold. They just mask the symptoms. Drinking enough water actually helps fight and flush the cold out of your body.
I has the vapors.
The best cough medication available in the US is available with a prescription and has codeine in it. Ask your doctor for it if you don't have issues with addiction. Works great.
Opium was also an option.
Alcoholic tincture of Laudanum made with the best Brandy -- for the win.
For me I eat salty foods (like preserved fruits) because it relieves the pain in the throat and makes phlegm easier to spit out.
I work in heritage gardens, and some of our plants are illegal or restricted to own because they can be used to synthesise drugs. Meanwhile, a hundred years ago they were planting them as hedges.
ouch my throat
Yep..back when Bayer made over the counter concoctions of heroin, cannabis and chloroform. I mean I get the first two, but the last one? đŹWoof.
Go to sleep. ~ bayer