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The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

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Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#591

Post by munificent »

lamontcg wrote: post #228
munificent wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not inconsistent to treat different things differently and different drugs are radically different in their individual health and societal effects. I live in Seattle where marijuana is legal. Alcohol and marijuana are widely consumed and I rarely see any large-scale problems from it. Obviously, there are many people who can't handle either of those, but their failure to handle it well seems to not impinge on oth…

You don't see anyone who is using opioids in the privacy of their own home who aren't out on the streets, so your sampling is massively biased. And the way we should look at drug addition with opiates isn't by looking at the homeless users, but consider the fact that we're all potentially one bad car accident away from getting hooked on pain killers, and asking what kind of support we would need to avoid winding up h…

> You don't see anyone who is using opioids in the privacy of their own home who aren't out on the streets

I also don't see anyone who is using alcohol and marijuana in the privacy of their own home.

My sampling is biased in that it doesn't accurately reflect the percentage all people using those various drugs. But it is (I believe) relatively unbiased in that it shows that of the people whose drug use concurrent with homelessness a much higher fraction of them are using opioids or meth compared to booze and pot.

I think there is a reasonable inference there that using opioids or method is much more likely to result in homelessness than using booze or pot.

Again, I'm not making any claims about what our policies should be for opioids and method. All I claim is that it's entirely reasonable to have different policies for them versus booze, pot—hell, caffeine—because while, sure, they are all technically drugs, they are radically different in how they affect individuals and society at large.

I'll also point out that I didn't suggest criminalizing hard drug use. Also, of the four epidodes I described, only one is about drug use itself. The other three were violent crimes whose victims were homeless people.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#592

Post by salawat »

throwaway48375 wrote: post #395
salawat wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up DXM. You will never find it without either Gualfenisin or acetaminophen. Does DXM need either of those to do what it does? No. Would it simplify dosing to be sold alone so that laymen didn't have to worry about potentially overdosing on three drugs at once instead of just one? Yes. However, from the war on drugs perspective, that makes it "easier to abuse" to achieve it's hallucinogenic side effect. Bundled w…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005E74U3W/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09LKLNKZ7/

Interesting.

First off: Amazon is NOT my first choice for a source of pharmaceutical. Period.

Second, spin through the comments. Quoted below is an example of exactly what I'm talking about:

>Active ingredient is dextromethorphan. This blocks cough receptors in the brain. Got a cough? Get this!

>2. No extra ingredients. It’s so hard to find pure medicines just for cough. Store shelves are littered with bundled products for all sorts of symptoms. I don’t like taking a bunch of unnecessary meds, so I buy single symptom products like this.

8>Finally, these gels are only sold in some stores. Shelf space is limited, so they rather carry heavily advertised, bundled meds that pay bigger margins. But they are here at Amazon for a great price!

8Point there being, you've got a system where being able to acquire unadulterated formulations of a substance is the exception rather than the norm.

If you look through drug applications or filings with FDA, you will find that many pharmaceutical companies favor highlighting "abuse-resistant" formulations of combo drugs, while downplaying potential harms and that marketshare of the pure drug decreases after an approval of a combo drug is achieved.

I have started to pay more attention to this sort of thing since they started toying with doing the same thing on stuff I take. I can see a blatant flex of incentive shaping when I see it, and frankly, I disagree with it.

Very vocally.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#593

Post by lamontcg »

munificent wrote: post #591
lamontcg wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see anyone who is using opioids in the privacy of their own home who aren't out on the streets, so your sampling is massively biased. And the way we should look at drug addition with opiates isn't by looking at the homeless users, but consider the fact that we're all potentially one bad car accident away from getting hooked on pain killers, and asking what kind of support we would need to avoid winding up h…

> You don't see anyone who is using opioids in the privacy of their own home who aren't out on the streets I also don't see anyone who is using alcohol and marijuana in the privacy of their own home. My sampling is biased in that it doesn't accurately reflect the percentage all people using those various drugs. But it is (I believe) relatively unbiased in that it shows that of the people whose drug use concurrent wit…

Alcohol, marijuana and caffeine aren't anywhere near as likely to lead to someone losing their job.

You've observed that the most highly criminalized drugs are used by the people who have probably been the most affected by trying to use the criminal justice system as our drug treatment program.

You need to disentangle the effects of the drug from the effects of how we treat the users of the drug. You can't look at the end product at attribute it entirely to the inherent properties of the substance. You're not observing it in a sociological vacuum.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#594

Post by telchior »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #440
telchior wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the ethical alternative is, for chronic conditions, someone who suffers for their entire life and is not allowed to do anything about it? Look at every wastebasket diagnosis (yes, that's a real term) out there. There is no "ethical", approved treatment. In fact, there's not even an understanding of what the condition is. Instead, doctors work down a list of bad ideas with their patients: all the various medicatio…

And note that such things don't always remain wastebasket diagnosis. Sometimes we figure out what's actually going on. Personally, I think many of the cases where something works for one patient but not another is actually saying there's more than one possible cause for the situation.

Or, that the cause is known but there are several potential mechanisms behind it. Usually those mechanisms are not well understood and may in turn be triggered by something that may not have been explained by science yet -- an infection, genetic abnormality or even an injury earlier in life.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#595

Post by etskinner »

joezydeco wrote: post #76
munificent wrote: post #43

My drug of choice for colds is NyQuil. It's always been great for opening up my nasal passages enough to let me breathe easily and then knocking me the fuck out so I could sleep off most of the cold. I remember several years ago when all of a sudden NyQuil stopped doing anything useful. I had no idea why but I directly observed that it was like it had been replaced with a non-functioning placebo. Only a couple years…

Original NyQuil also had a healthy shot of ethyl alcohol in it. Exactly the thing you weren't supposed to mix with pseudoephedrine.

It still does have alcohol[1]:

> Q: How much alcohol is in NyQuil?

> A: NyQuil Liquid contains 10 percent alcohol. NyQuil LiquiCaps does not contain alcohol. Alcohol-Free NyQuil Cold & Flu Nighttime Relief Liquid does not contain alcohol.

https://vicks.com/en-us/safety-and-faqs/faqs/vicks-nyquil-fa...

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#596

Post by [deleted] »

edmundsauto wrote: post #236
paulmd wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doesn't get you high. this is the big one. Phenyl-epinephrine doesn't work at all, it's consistently failed to outperform placebo, and the only reason it's on the market is because the FDA doesn't like pseudo-ephedrine (sudafed) because it can be used as a precursor for meth. Same reason they've required individual blister packs for sudafed (if only there was some illicit drug which gave you the focus and drive to…

What makes you say the FDA is actively adding poison to other drugs, are there first hand sources from them? This sounds like it could also be a case where they want to lower opiate consumption, and so adding some Tylenol increases pain relief without increasing opiate intake. I am not sure that’s wise policy, but if you don’t think Tylenol is all that bad (again, I’m not sufficiently informed to say this, but the FD…

[deleted]

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#597

Post by JJMcJ »

lkrubner wrote: post #589
dataangel wrote: post #146

I've recently had to deal with the medical profession a lot more than in the past and I'm finding this sort of thing everywhere. OTC medicines that by current standards would not be made OTC, surgeries that are extremely common but have never had quality randomized trials, official sounding diagnoses that on inspection are actually defined as "we have no idea", lack of consensus about how to treat some of the most co…

"the complete lack of enforcement of what goes in supplements" This is because of the oddly libertarian 1994 DSHEA act: https://ods.od.nih.gov/About/dshea_Wording.aspx From 1904 to 1994 the FDA was fairly strict about banning most herbal remedies. Indeed, the FDA was created, in part, to limit the types of "snake oil" treatments that used to abound, and to limit the claims that could made for unproven treatments. But…

The fear at the time was that all supplements would be by prescription only.

Then a 250 mg capsule of Vitamin C would be $14.00.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#598

Post by slowmovintarget »

fluoridation wrote: post #418
slowmovintarget wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After going nearly a year without taking painkillers of any kind (not an aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen dose), I took some Tylenol for a bad headache, and it worked far better than it had ever worked for me before. Granted, I've had to learn to put up with a lot more constant low-level pain in my day-to-day life. But I think that's a reasonable trade off for choosing between cooking my kidneys (aspirin, ibuprof…

>After going nearly a year without taking painkillers I find this pretty shocking. Is this how people normally take painkillers, would you say? Speaking for myself, I normally go for years without taking anything.

Throughout my life I've suffered from significant allergies, so I've taken antihistamines for many decades (by prescription in my youth to OTC now). The allergies frequently cause sinus infections, which can include anything from minor pain around the ears and jaw, to heavy duty headaches.

It used to be the doctors would have me bomb my system with antibiotics, decongestants, and, yes, painkillers. Forty years on, we know a bit more, or at least I do, and I avoid as many medications (and the side-effects which increase with aging) as I can. I also suffered from tendonitis in the knees, so all of this put together meant I was regularly taking Tylenol or Advil for one or the other.

Then I stopped. I stopped using Tylenol unless I had a fever, or a really bad headache. When I got a sinus headache the first thing I'd reach for was a netty pot or sinus rinse instead of decongestants and painkillers. Physical therapy helped rehabilitate the knees, and when it rains, I just suck it up and limp for a day or two.

Those things and a few other medical issues add up to a steady catalog of pain that I just ignore for most of the day. In some cases, I stretch or exercise. I consider myself doing OK if I'm taking Tylenol or Aspirin once a quarter.

I'm happy you need no painkillers whatsoever for years on end. I think that's how it's supposed to be. For some people, it doesn't work out that way.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#600

Post by smm11 »

djrogers wrote: post #179
smm11 wrote: post #41

I'd be crippled without Bronkaid. And weed.

I'm not sure mixing uppers and downers like that is a great idea, but Bronkaid has been a life saver for me.

One before work, the other after. I tried just one or the other, and it doesn't work as well as before/after.
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