Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it will work as a suppository.
It’s worth a try. I’d recommend buying a separate spray for your nose though.
“This medicine smells like crap.”
The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
91–100 of 350 posts
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#92Public service announcement: sinus rinse (e.g. NeilMed) works. Available in every drug store with no prescription or pharmacist involvement necessary.
It's gross, though. Do it in private.
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#93This strikes me as an example of a larger phenomenon. Take for example the counter-insurgency wars that have become normalized since 9/11. In these conflicts, there is enormous pressure to minimize casualties because these directly undermine the political will to conduct military operations. As such, the strategic objectives eventually degenerate to mere "presence", and commanders are effectively unable to pursue the…
(1) I think there's pretty wide agreement that selling Sudafed PE is worse than selling nothing at all, and I'd sort of expect it to be off the shelves sometime soon (it should have been much earlier than this). (2) "Selling nothing at all" is actually not the policy. Real Sudafed is simply a behind-the-pharmacy-counter drug. You don't need a script to get it (plenty of non-abusable drugs do require scripts, a much h…
> Real Sudafed is to a first approximation available to everybody.
I didn't actually know this, and it's good to know. That said, I'm not certain that most people are aware that it is available without a script. Maybe I'm wrong.
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#94Public service announcement: sinus rinse (e.g. NeilMed) works. Available in every drug store with no prescription or pharmacist involvement necessary. It's gross, though. Do it in private.
It doesn't reduce the sinus inflammation. At least for me all I end up with is a still congested, but now watery nose.
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
(1) I think there's pretty wide agreement that selling Sudafed PE is worse than selling nothing at all, and I'd sort of expect it to be off the shelves sometime soon (it should have been much earlier than this). (2) "Selling nothing at all" is actually not the policy. Real Sudafed is simply a behind-the-pharmacy-counter drug. You don't need a script to get it (plenty of non-abusable drugs do require scripts, a much h…
> Real Sudafed is to a first approximation available to everybody. I didn't actually know this, and it's good to know. That said, I'm not certain that most people are aware that it is available without a script. Maybe I'm wrong.
If you walk up to the pharmacy counter at any Walgreens or CVS, literally the first thing you're going to see is a shelf of decongestants.
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but this particular database presumably doesn't have anything especially sensitive in it, apart from your Sudafed consumption. I don't mean to dismiss that point, it's a valid point, I'm just considering it closely.
Anything a government uses to uniquely identify and track individuals (i.e. driver's license) is the target.
Until very recently, drivers license numbers were effectively public in a lot of states (they're deterministically generated from public information).
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you worried about the government recording your usage of Sudafed? What is anybody going to do with that information? Serious question! I understand the principle involved; I just want to know if there's some practical concern.
For me, it’s a matter of it’s none of their business . No one’s accused me of making meth, but here’s all my PII in a database “just in case”. It’s literally harder for me to buy cold medicine than a gun. I hate everything about that situation.
I mean, the reason they keep the database is especially clear here, right? They're just trying to enforce a rate limit. It's the most obvious public policy response you can have to "a drug that in small quantities is a useful decongestant, but in moderate quantities or above is an ultra powerful stimulant whose abuse is ravaging parts of the country".
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you worried about the government recording your usage of Sudafed? What is anybody going to do with that information? Serious question! I understand the principle involved; I just want to know if there's some practical concern.
What they're going to do with it is prevent me from making a purchase if I've crossed some arbitrary limit as if exceeding that limit automatically makes me a drug trafficker. From there, it's not too far of a stretch to imagine the government assigning someone to review the list and to expend additional investigative resources into merely "suspicious" cases. Plenty of good tragedies start this way. If the government…
They're just going to say "no", right? They're not going to "automatically make you a drug trafficker". They're just trying to enforce a rate limit.
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easily the best example of why the stupid federal law limiting access to a useful decongestant backfired.
In what way did it backfire? It's a useful decongestant. But it also basically is methamphetamine, with just a couple easily-reversible Rubik's turns to make it a decongestant instead of an ultra-powerful stimulant.
Didn’t prevent people from getting meth, but did allow drug companies to make millions selling a useless compound. I doubt that was the intent of the legislation.
Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've maintained my own reserve of pseudoephedrine for years. Synthesizing it from widely-available and affordable street drugs, I assume. https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...
At least if I followed that path, I would not be required to have my purchase recorded in an insecure government database.
Something tells me there is more than just a government owned database involved. Likely at least one third party vendor system... Not to mention every pharmacy chain probably stores or at least transmits it through one their own systems.