The Medication Cocktail Hypothesis

multifauceted — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:44:55 +0000

I woke up this morning with a cold. Nothing to write home about. Just a can’t taste your breakfast, fill your pockets with tissues, drink a lot of tea kind of cold. I gave myself half a dose of whatever generic drugstore brand daytime cold medicine my sister left around after Thanksgiving and headed to work.

About an hour after my second dose, my head was pounding. The label on the cold stuff assured me it would take care of that. But it also said the medicine was delicious honey lemon flavored (which is a boldfaced lie) so I was maybe a titch resentful of the stuff by then.

Anyway, I posed the following question to several of my friends: “cold medication plus advil: yea or nay?” Typically, people like to overlook my random queries (when I asked “Ginger bread men: Christmas or non-denominational?” for example, no one bothered), but today for whatever reason, the responses poured in. Verbatim:

Friend #1: ”Advil has caffeine/stimulants in it, cold medicine has the opposite. it’s not that it would be bad for you, but that they’ll cancel each other out and be totally ineffective.”

Friend #2: ”dude if you mix that shit you’re gonna feel way high”

Friend #3: I have no idea. Sorry.

Friend #4: “you have a headache? ya go ahead and mix i guess”

Friend #5: “You didn’t take that yet did you? You can’t mix those.”

What I’ve learned since then (at least I think, you know, I’m still not entirely sure) is that, YEA, mixing with advil would’ve been fine because it wouldn’t interfere or counteract the active ingredient. Mixing with tylenol, however, wouldn’t have worked out so hot. Apparently these two are completely different drugs. Regardless, did any of my friends know the active ingredient when they were dispensing medical advice? No. No they did not.

I’m not sure which discomfits me more, the fact that not a single one of these college educated 20-something adults knew the answer (or even the right question to ask) or that 4/5 of them asserted their partially or entirely wrong answer with complete confidence.

So important lessons abound today. First: no one out there my age understands how to medicate themselves, so I should probably not rely on them questions in that regard if I want to stay alive. Ever. And second: Was there a second? Oh yeah. Colds kind of suck.

Multifauceted

The Medication Cocktail Hypothesis