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Should DayQuil Be Legal?

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Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#231

Post by SubmarineClub »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #225
nostrademons wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. 4g is generally considered perfectly safe and is fairly commonplace dosing. 7g can kill you. Hence a therapeutic index of This is why you have to be very, very careful. If you're doing 8 500mg Tylenol pills and then you also do 6 doses of DayQuil or Mucinex without realizing it's also acetaminophen, you can end up needing a liver transplant.

I wonder why it is not a more commonplace useage for suicides. Females seem to enjoy overdoes more, and men seem to enjoy violent ways. But female sucicides often "fails", seems like eating a box of Tylenols (here they come in 20 packs) would solve the "being alive" issue quite quick, no? Better not tip people off... :) >end up needing a liver transplant You won't get one nor should you get one if the reason is this.

Probably because most people realize that it’s a horribly unpleasant way to go about it?

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#232

Post by jmalicki »

rustcleaner wrote: post #62
jmalicki wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is probably the OTC drug that is at the top of the list to be made RX-only due to its dangers.

Please no. We need to be going the other way on that trend: converting things which won't easily outright kill/maim you (and dare I say, even potentially addictive ones) at normal doses from Rx to OTC! Acetaminophen is one of the few cheap, easy, and working products on the shelf!

Tylenol is one of the things on the shelf most likely to kill you from liver failure. It is way more dangerous than many prescription drugs.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#234

Post by nostrademons »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #225
nostrademons wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. 4g is generally considered perfectly safe and is fairly commonplace dosing. 7g can kill you. Hence a therapeutic index of This is why you have to be very, very careful. If you're doing 8 500mg Tylenol pills and then you also do 6 doses of DayQuil or Mucinex without realizing it's also acetaminophen, you can end up needing a liver transplant.

I wonder why it is not a more commonplace useage for suicides. Females seem to enjoy overdoes more, and men seem to enjoy violent ways. But female sucicides often "fails", seems like eating a box of Tylenols (here they come in 20 packs) would solve the "being alive" issue quite quick, no? Better not tip people off... :) >end up needing a liver transplant You won't get one nor should you get one if the reason is this.

It's a pretty terrible way to go. Death doesn't come immediately; you seem fine at first, and then about 3 days later you suffer intense abdominal pain and vomiting. At about 4 days you realize your liver is irreversibly shot and you're a dead man walking unless you can get a liver transplant. Then you enter multi-organ failure as your body and brain shuts down.

Acetaminophen poisoning actually featured on two episodes of House, and one of them had the suicide plotline. In S05E11, "Joy to the World" they suspected an overweight teen OD'd on acetaminophen trying to kill herself, but the actual diagnosis was eclampsia from an undisclosed pregnancy. In S06E10, "Wilson", a friend of Wilson's suffers acetaminophen poisoning while trying to manage his back pain.

https://house.fandom.com/wiki/Joy_to_the_World

https://house.fandom.com/wiki/Wilson_(episode)

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#235

Post by BeetleB »

kube-system wrote: post #144
tristor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who don't know that Tylenol and acetaminophen are the same thing. That is not a reason for us to make everyone's quality of life and access to healthcare worse because some people are ignorant. The desire to nanny-state things to the lowest common denominator is ruining everything, and it's a major driver for various problems all the way to the housing crisis and the cost of healthcare in the first p…

OTC drugs should be both available and regulated to be sold in such a way to minimize harm to people who use it. Honestly, combination drugs are out of fucking control. Some people don't know Advil is ibuprofin. Some people think all Advil is ibuprofin. Both are wrong! It used to be true that doctors could tell people that it was okay to take [X] brand drug with [Y] brand drug but anymore, there are a half dozen form…

I blame doctors and nurses. At least the ones I personally know tell patients "Advil" and "Tylenol" and never mention ibuprofen or acetaminophen. Actually, it's true for pretty much all OTC medications - they just use the branded names Immodium, not loperamide. Claritin. Zyrtec. Benadryl. Dramamine (drowsy/non-drowsy). The list goes on.

When asked, they always tell me one of two things:

1. They were trained on these names instead of the ingredient (scary!)

2. They want the "easiest" thing for the patients (i.e. so they don't have to look at the label).

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#236

Post by viccis »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #226
viccis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acetaminophen should be treated with more caution in general. So many people have reacted with shock and upset when I told them that taking Tylenol (or anything with acetaminophen in it like Dayquil/Nyquil) while drinking can cause immediate liver damage.

>reacted with shock and upset when I told them that taking Tylenol (or anything with acetaminophen in it like Dayquil/Nyquil) while drinking can cause immediate liver damage. Maybe your package needs to be clearer but here in Sweden it says to avoid taking with alcohol. Or people cannot read anymore?

Most people grew up taking Tylenol as kids for various things and it was never a new medicine to them that they felt the need to read. Also, there's a huge difference between "don't take this with alcohol, it will make you more drowsy" and "even one beer with this will start fucking your liver up don't even think about it". I think people associate the latter with more intense medication than some OTC mild pain meds.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#237

Post by [deleted] »

ultrarunner wrote: post #33
ryandrake wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Caveat Emptor" and "Do your own research" is not a basis for a functional society. Providing reading material is not a sufficient substitute for regulation in a country like the USA where 54% of adults read below a sixth-grade level. And letting marketing decide what counts as "accurate information" is just letting the fox guard the henhouse.

Counterpoint: 54% of adults read below a sixth-grade level because a society has been created to facilitate (and encourage) just that. Encouraging a population to rely on the thought processes of others is exactly what leads to over reliance on marketing.

[deleted]

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#238

Post by BeetleB »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #18
techbro92 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the argument for legalizing drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes, are toxic, and have a high addictive potential? How does it benefit me or society if my neighbor is permitted to choose to basically roll the dice on afflicting themselves with a debilitating chronic illness (severe addiction)? If I don’t want to do illegal drugs why would I ant to support this?

I went to a southeast asian country and got a staph infection. I walked down to the pharmacy, asked the pharmastst for a topical and an oral antibiotic. 3 days later i was healed, continued the course the rest of the week and that was it. $12 dollars american. I got another staph infection previously in the united states. Needed to go to a doc in the box who misdiagnosed it. A few days went by and i needed to go to a…

> That's why drugs should be legalized.

And dead men tell no tales.

Particularly the tales on why they shouldn't be legalized.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#239

Post by annzabelle »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #227
annzabelle wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of us, Ibuprofen works just as well or better than Acetaminophen, so banning Acetaminophen is not much of a problem. I am on a medication that's contraindicated with NSAIDs, but I made sure that a low dose of Ibuprofen was acceptable.

Ibuprofen is hard on the kidneys and stomach too. And bleeding/clotting issues. Sooo ya :) Better just stay off the beer hubby. Remember, beer makes you fat also.

Wow, that's a really weird tone for a hackernews comment.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#240

Post by Lerc »

I had a cold a year or two ago, I had used the last of a bottle of actually working cough medicine, attempting to buy a replacement failing to do so, I found it had been banned. Turns out the active ingredient was morphine, which is apparently quite an effective decongestant in very low doses(and variants have been used as such for thousands of years)

That started me on a quest for a good cough medicine. My research turned up some interesting results.

Different countries have their own go-to medications for decongestants. Actual different drugs, not just the same thing under a different name.

None of them work.

Anything that does work is banned unless the people making it have been doing so for a couple of hundred years, then it seems that they just pretend it's not there.

When challenged the industry defended their sale of ineffective products by saying if they didn't work, people wouldn't buy them.

Anecdotal evidence is taken as gospel in many public health circles. When an attempt to have a substance banned was rejected on the basis of no evidence of abuse, it appears that means 'try again later', not gather evidence. You only have to wait for someone who shares your ideology once and it gets done and getting it undone is too much work for anyone to consider.

It's almost enough to send you off to a music festival to gather your own supplies for home remedies.

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