according to the acetaminophen i've got at home, dangerous dosage is >4g per day. that means that if 4 packets was 20x that, each packet would be 20g, which, if they're normal 500mg pills, would be 40 pills per packet.
Therapeutic dose of acetaminophen is 15 mg/kg q6h prn. That dose of 4g/day ==> 1g/dose. 1000mg/(15mg/kg) = 66.67kg == 145lb.
That's the minimum weight for that acetaminophen dosing. If you're under that weight, you can consider the reduced dose. If you're over 145lb, no need to worry. And honestly, I think I'm the only one who actually doses this stuff q6h anyway. I think most people end up doing TID dosing because that allows uninterrupted sleep.
Various countries limit painkillers to small packet sizes (e.g. 20 pills here in Germany) and pharmacies only hand them out one at a time, so you can't overdose as easily/spontaneously, either like the person in the post did due to pain, or for suicidal purposes.
It's not perfect protection, as you can just go to multiple pharmacies to buy multiple packets, but yeah, you will have to actually go do that and will get told at the pharmacy that you shouldn't take more, if you're not aware.
Yikes! The use of the term "packet" was initially confusing to me. Here in the States it's not uncommon to see small packets of a single dose of over the counter medicines in gas stations and convenience stores for when you're not at home and something comes up. The directions for extra strength Tylenol are 2 every 6hrs (1000mg dose) not exceeding 3 doses per day.
I was thinking "4 packets over 3 days, what's the big deal?"
i heard some people fitness takes these so they can train excessively longer than normal. it was a news article a certain group was discussing, and they were tellinig a story of a dude doing that, that guy got addicted for sure to the pain meds, because they said he couldnt do anything without them.
America... I remember seeing "value packs" of Tylenol containing 300 pills... that's their idea of freedom... to allow people the choice of slow and agonizing suicide by liver failure
The bottle on my shelf has 350 (new, Costco brand) but I don't take over the recommended dose for obvious reasons. Guess it expired last year now that I look heh. The smaller bottles cost more per dose so no reason not buy a larger one. This is in Canada, not the US for people curious about other countries.
That math doesn't quite add up. Sure less per dose sounds good, but if you're wasting half the bottle then paying a little more per dose but less total cost is still more economical.
i buy the larger ones online. better than buying the small ones. i do this for anti-histamines too, because i got allergies, i can get 1000tablets for the 1st generations easy, and cheaper pricing for the 2nd generation ones years worth. kirkland has the quality to it, im trying some off-brand(probably chinese made) doesnt seem as effective, and it was a wierd shape.
Well, generally you're only supposed to take ~2 tablets at a time, so 10? 40 pills a day is 13,000mg of acetaminophen, or 20,000mg if they're extra strength.
That's, uh, bad. You're recommended to take under 4000mg per day, so that'd be a bit over a packet? Makes sense to me.
For the record, mixing two painkillers without consulting a doctor is also usually a bad idea but way fucking less of a bad idea than taking 13000mg of tylenol in a day. Afaik, acetaminophen with other stuff is probably fine but napoxen, ibuprofen, and aspirin all work roughly the same way and shouldn't be mixed.
For the record, mixing two painkillers without consulting a doctor is also usually a bad idea but way fucking less of a bad idea than taking 13000mg of tylenol in a day.
Basically, if something hurts so much that you might take enough paracetamol/acetaminophen to fuck with your liver then you yes, you should be under a doctor's care. That said, between my wife and me, we've had three or four doctors over the years all be very chill with the idea of alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen after surgery or the like. I guess they work on such different chemical pathways that they don't have much interaction potential, and keeping under the daily dose of Tylenol in particular is incredibly important, as we've seen in this thread.
tyelonol works on the liver, the others like ibuprofen, naproxen,,,etc works by inhibiting the cox1 and 2 enzymes. of courses take 2 much of the inhibitors is very similar to aspirin, it can prevent clotting(which in itself is a therapeuthic uses for clotting disorders)
Don't take my word for it but I think paracetamol and ibuprofen with added codeine can be taken together despite the double codeine as the amount they have is low enough that double is still safe.
Check with a pharmacist first, dosages are going to vary and I am just some guy on the internet.
I don't think there's a standard size, but I know they sell them in packages of 3x10 where I live. Eating 4 full packets of those in a day would put you at 15 times the upper recommended daily dosage, for what it's worth, which is calculated slightly conservatively to not be lethal for any adults
the ones for arthiritis, is around 625mg, with caffiene. i had 500mg naproxen Rx for buristis once, it can cause stomach issues, because it turns on inflammation, so the acid levels increase and can cause things like heartburns.
Did you ever stop to consider that this person was in so much pain with no other alternatives that they might have done so out of desperation rather than simple ignorance?
If you're in that much pain, you go to the hospital, you dont overdose on Tylenol. This isn't a sympathy thing. And based on the response they gave the doctor, it was an ignorance thing.
I've been in this position before. Sent home from hospital twice to "take some paracetamol". Third time I went in they pumped my stomach because of how much paracetamol I had taken, and finally gave me some actual painkillers.
When you are in debilitating pain, side-effects are not something that you particularly care about.
Typed a whole thing put and then deleted it. Not even going to bother. You're making inferences you just cant make from the post. I agree, there are systemic barriers to Healthcare, this isn't that.
Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol is both weak ass painkiller and really dangerous because the overdose line is low. Here they put it in synthetic opioid drugs, it doesn't help with pain but does make them more dangerous.
oh yea it isnt as good as other otc nsaids, like ibuprofen and naproxen, or aspirin. oh and that fake pseudoephedrine mimic(phenyleprine) for cogestion, they already said it has no effect whatsoever. its mostly the 1st generation antihistamines doing all the work for your sinuses when you have the cold anyways.
Opioids are fir suffering whereas acetaminophen is for pain signals. A combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen have been demonstrated to be the most effective pain killer we currently have.
Here's to hoping that I never have to find out first hand.
Just a literal Life Pro Tip for anyone still reading, sign up for organ donation. It will cost you nothing, the urban myths about hospitals harvesting the organs out of "locked in" locked in donors are total BS, but the lives you can save are very real.
People look up resources on them and see that the recommended max dose of ibuprofen is lower than paracetamol per day in weight of the active ingredient and stop reading.
They don't get to the part about how the effect per weight isn't the same. Or how damaging paracetamol can be for the liver if you take it regularly or go over the recommend limit. Heavy drinkers especially don't take into account the extra stress on their liver, which is a contributor to the 400-500 deaths it causes every year in the US alone.
Meanwhile ibuprofen makes you feel sick and want to vomit once you start to go over the recommended limit. And if you reach that stage, you basically just stay hydrated to keep your kidneys going and wait for it to pass. Since it usually takes another 2-3 times as much to for the severe effects to occur.
To quote Scrubs:
Dr. Cox: Did you just page me to ask me how much ibuprofen to give Mrs. Lenzner here?
Sunny: Well, I was worried it would exacerbate the patient's
Dr. Cox: It's ibuprofen! Here's what you do. When she wakes up, get her to open her mouth nice and wide, then get some of those ibuprofen pills in your hands and throw them at her. Whatever sticks in there, that's the correct dosage.
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is definitely tough on the liver. I remember during EMT classes (well, I kinda remember, was 20 years ago) having one of the paramedics in the class talking about how it was worse on the liver than heroin. Now yes, heroin obviously has other downsides, but it's just crazy to think about. I have always limited my intake of it, never take it if I've been drinking, that sort of thing. The issue is that it's not exactly common knowledge. I know plenty of people who would drink and take some Tylenol at bedtime to kill the hangover. Not a good habit.
On an informal survey of several hundred men aged 18 to 60 at or below the income cutoff for recieving free medical insurance from the state they were living in, less than 10% knew Tylenol was bad for your liver at all and just over 25% knew that long term ibuprofen use was bad for kidneys.
The number goes up when income does, but considering the number of people working for minimum wage over here...
We have a culture of ADVERTISING medication here, every possible attempt at minimizing public knowledge of medical side effects is made at every legal turn because fear cuts profits.
Edit -- I should add that I've met multiple educated people who heard that the Brits had some super dangerous liver killing over the counter painkiller that they just LET people have who were glad we didn't allow that kind of nonsense here.
Very few people know what paracetamol is and would be surprised to learn it's another name for Tylenol.
I would say most people are like this. Knowing it's super dangerous in high doses is the minority because it's sold OTC and everyone knows and trusts it.
I was about to make a joke about understanding the safety profile of the air you breathe, and then I remembered I work near various chemicals... Mfs have mixed clorox and lysol at my workplace before. Safety is no joke
I mean this is just dumb. Like I’m sorry but this would happen with basically every medicine or drug. They aren’t made to be taken at higher doses than advised.
(Imagine you took 8 liters of beer per day for 3 days, you’d be half dead too.)
On the medical board exams, you get questions talking about patients that drink pints or liters of liquor every day and you're expected to know all the various health problems that come with alcohol use disorder.
You know what else is stupid? Pain management in the US. I get that you need to be careful about addiction, but the idea that people should have to suffer pain because we're having a pain medication "reefer madness" spasm is idiocy.
The guy just kept taking them until his teeth stopped hurting. Why is the alternative that he just has to put up with being in pain?
Yeah, it was rampant here in Jersey, and we're definitely still feeling the effects. Things that didn't need opiates got opiates. And guess what? Lotta people all of a sudden need them for life. And it wasn't just Oh, here's your script. Doctors were knowingly abusing it for profit. So like with most things in life, some people ruin it for everyone else.
Yes it is. I have had, over my 40 years as migraineuse (they started in my teens) 5 intractable migraines. Meaning less than once every 5 years I get one that lasts days, I cannot eat or drink, just puke. I used to be able to go to my doctor and get shot up with opiates and Phenergan, so much of it, they would do one dose, come back later, another, another, another, until finally I would say "it still hurts but I don't care" and go home nodding like a junkie, sleep and wake up with no headache, and, importantly, NO desire for more drugs.
Now the opiates are not allowed because they didn't work. But nothing works on the status migraine. Now they give you a cold cocktail IV of some sort of Advil and nausea medicine and it doesn't work either, and costs $2,000 because it can only be done in the emergency room not the doctor office.
It's adding insult to injury. There has to be some way to make these available for acute situations at least.
I worked with a middle-aged women once who had a variety of health problems - she wheeled an oxygen tank around the office with her - who told me she got a migraine during puberty and had had it ever since.
My wife has gotten migraine with aura since her teens, but thankfully only once every couple of months, and they tapered off to a couple times a year when she hit around 40. Her mom was opposed to allopathic medicine, so my wife never got anything stronger than sugar pills. They were bad; she'd last in bed crying and screaming, if she wasn't at the toilet dry-heaving.
Sometime after we married, she started trying all of the various migraine meds, like Imitrex; nothing worked reliably after the first couple of times, and now she keeps Vicodin in her purse. She uses, maybe, 20mg once every couple of months, and it mostly does like you say: she says it still hurts some, but she doesn't care.
I will hurt the person who tries to take that from her.
I will offer hope. Menopause, regrettably did not help, they got less intense (which I didn't know was a thing, when the doctor used to ask I would get confused could only say worse than childbirth, they were all 11 on a scale of 10, but after menopause they were more like 6/10) and more frequent.
But
Menopause plus MHT (low dose of estrogen and progesterone, same amount every day) has knocked out nearly all of them.
So if she is menopausal and still getting them, she might want to try the MHT - it's only meant to manage symptoms (migraine could be one) not get your blood level up to any target.
And yeah I remember how it was before I could afford any medical care, I often thought death would be relief. Migraine is the worst pain I have experienced, and I have had natural births, lost loved ones, broken bones - nothing has come close to a bad migraine. And all were bad until menopause.
It was an unexpected benefit, birth control pills made mine so much worse I was reluctant to try the MHT, but it has made a remarkable difference, I feel really good, and not dreading a migraine is probably a big part of that.
Imitrex by injection did work for mine about 95% of the time, I am really sorry it didn't work for your wife. It's incredible when it works, no drugged feeling just awful feeling rush then easing of pain until no headache.
We have never had good pain management here. Claiming babies can't feel pain, black people hace higher pain tolerance, etc etc. then we swung into really permissive use with oxycodone for a while.
Yeah, I've dealt with massive tooth pain before. Given a choice between going through a week of that pain, and maybe killing myself with pills, I'll take my chances with the pills.
Pain isn't an unhealthy condition & it won't kill you.
Medicine isn't supposed to eliminate pain entirely especially if it conflicts with medical treatment or promotes unhealthy dependence on painkillers.
Pain is definitely not a vital sign & those pain face scales & the like are propaganda brought to you by pharmaceutical lobbyists instead of hard medical science.
Americans have uncritically played into some strange ideas without asking where they came from.
We can't cure migraines. We can't cure cancer. We can't cure back pain. We can't cure a lot of stuff that causes recurring pain in people, for whom pain isn't a warning but a useless life impediment.
The body is not a perfect machine, and we don't understand or know how to fix most of the problems with it.
Off-topic: the topic is a toothache, which is usually curable.
There are medical guidelines for chronic pain management, and leaping to dangerous, addictive substances aren't that.
There's pain catastrophizing to watch out for.
There are multi-disciplinary approaches recommended before turning to prescriptions.
Despite not suffering more pain than other nationalities, Americans had been taking disproportionately more pain pills than the rest of the world.
There is something wrong with the mentality that treats medicine as an exercise of pain satisfaction rather than pain management & imagines that patients need to live pain-free despite the dangers.
During the opioid crisis, articles like this had belabored that point repeatedly & explained where the industry went wrong.
The only way it happened is if people who need a liver but not because of alcohol-related damage are pushed to the top of the list. The alcoholics would basically be last in line. Some might say that's discriminatory, but it's perfectly normal to triage patients and provide care to the ones with more immediate needs, or the ones most likely to survive. Doctors have to make judgement calls.
No organ magically heals itself, you're not Wolverine. Liver damage is permanent, any dosage over 4 grams of paracetamol per 24 hours (typically four doses of two 500mg tablets) can cause liver damage. Let the damage accumulate, and you'll go into liver failure. If the liver fails, you'll have to hope you're lucky enough to get a donor, or you'll be counting down hours left in your life.
Take good care of your body and be healthy, your older self will thank you.
No organ magically heals itself, you’re not Wolverine
There are at least 2 organs that heal. First is your skin, if you consider that an organ. Wounds heal and often leave scars as a lasting reminder of the damage that was there.
The other organ is the liver, the scar tissue that occurs in the liver after healing is called cirrhosis.
When the liver is damaged it stops doing it's function. Removing the paracetamol doesn't remove the damage, so the the liver is still not functioning. It would take a long time to recover the liver function after you've stopped taking the paracetamol. You can only live days without a functioning liver.
I think what's extra dangerous about Tylenol is that it doesnt feel like it's doing anything. When it works, some minor pain goes away, or maybe your fever goes down. But there's no side effects that you really feel, so I bet people get a false sense of security with it. Like, oh it isn't giving me opioid euphoria, or knocking me out. And you can just buy as much as you want, no restrictions. It must be perfectly safe.
There is a brand mixing acetylsalicylic acid and koffein which works wonders as a quick relief for migraine while my standard naproxen usually requires a few hours of darkness to start working, so I can't agree that all over the counter meds are garbage. I can't refute your placebo claims since the effect cant be measured by myself
Got lucky I suppose, as "lucky" as waiting or someone to die so you can live can be. They did warn me it could be weeks before I hear anything.
edit- I was also pretty high priority (or whatever it might be referred to as) being in my early 30's when it happened, not a drug user, and generally take good care of myself.
He's not the first one to 'kill his liver' with paracetamol/ acetominophen (tylenol). First case I recall, the person was taking tylenol nightly with a glass of wine. Here's some links on the current understanding of Liver injury and paracetamol:
Acetaminophen-Induced Hepatotoxicity: a Comprehensive Update (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4913076/) "...in the United States, in particular, it accounts for more than 50% of overdose-related acute liver failure and approximately 20% of the liver transplant cases."
Risk Factors for Hepatotoxicity Due to Paracetamol Overdose in Adults (https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/57/8/752) "In the univariable analysis, significant hepatotoxicity risk factors were male gender, alcohol abuse, an ingested paracetamol dose, and a timespan from ingestion to hospital admission. The later one was the only significant risk factor in the multivariable model (adjusted odds ratio 1.08; 95% CI: 1.03–1.12)."
Paracetamol (acetaminophen) overdose and hepatotoxicity: mechanism, treatment, prevention measures, and estimates of burden of disease (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37436926/) "Where data were available, we estimate that paracetamol is involved in 6% of poisonings, 56% of severe acute liver injury and acute liver failure, and 7% of drug-induced liver injury."
He's lucky it was just his liver. People who overdose or try to commit suicide with it are not in for a good time or quick death and after it's absorbed into your body it will cause a systemic shutdown of several organs like the kidneys and pancreas. Not just the liver, and there's absolutely no way to counteract this after that first 36 hours. You will die (you aren't getting all of the organs replaced) and it will take days before you succumb. No antidote or life support or anything can be done for you.
You'll feel fine the first day but may have some vomiting. By day 3 the jaundice and stomach pain sets in as the liver is first to show signs of the organs failure and it's no longer possible to counteract the drug. By the fourth day your organs start shutting down and you'll have much more pain and vomiting. All that can be done is get your affairs in order because you'll be dead and in pain while you wait around to die and regret your suicide.
I say suicide because it's almost always intentional. It usually takes 40 325mg pills to cause this, although the liver damage can be caused with 20+ pills in an adult, generally. If you think you've possibly overdosed get to the hospital quick and tell them what you've taken so they can start you on Acytylcystine. If you "feel fine" after the first day or so and think you're all good you may be wrong and when day Tyree rolls around and your feeling bad or jaundiced your liver is already wrecked and can't be fixed.
Paracetamol overdoses are still worse though. Organ failure is long, painful and normally filled with regret.
Suicide by pills is a complete lottery unless you know the specific effects when taken in massive quantities. Most people don't and assume overdoses will just be extensions of regular doses. "It's a pain killer so I won't feel anything" is really dumb logic.
It's people like this who make other people think any amount of painkillers is bad, and seem to get a sense of superiority about them for never taking any.
Even a little acetaminophen makes my liver feel funny the next day. Ibuprofen actually works for pain relief for me (migraines mostly) but it can cause stomach ulcers. Painkillers are definitely not something you can just use without thinking, and daily use especially can fuck your body up, ibuprofen is also hard on your kidneys.
Take the minimum effective dose as infrequently as possible.
did you ever check your liver? that doesnt sound normal. with a small dose.
nsaids can cause bleeding and ulcers if itsa high dose. its because it inhibits cox 1 and 2, for clotting, and it works on your stomach by turning off inflammation, so your stomach can combat the acid with more mucus and cell turnover(inflammation increases cell turnover), thats why h pylori is a thing.
Oh, shit! Guy OD'd on acetaminophen? Yeah, that is scary. My wife had a friend that attempted a self KO with Tylenol for some reason. What a horrible way to go. She is so lucky she didn't need a transplant.
fun fact, when you mix sinus medicines your blood can test positive for methamphetamine.
I know this because I am now on a list of meth addicts at every networked hospital after an er visit while treating a sinus infection.
they took four blood tests and "confirmed" I was high on meth and refused to treat why I was there in the first place because to them, I was high as shit. even though I was literally directing people around blood on the floor and calling for housekeeping to come clean up the blood on the floor because the nurse refused to do her fucking job.
I asked to be removed from the list as well as have the false test results removed from my history and was told that's impossible.
doesn't technology make things so much better? Now the best pain meds I'll ever get at a hospital will be extra strength Tylenol. you know, that shit I have at home they charge me $400 a pill for.
Pseudoephedrine is the main ingredient in meth, that's why they changed all the OTC sinus stuff to phenylephrine years ago, and why the OTC stuff doesn't work worth a damn anymore.
It's why in the UK shops won't sell more than 2 packets at a time. It's statistically reduced the amount of people killing themselves with them (intentionally or by mistake).
It is stupid scary how a lot of what prevents people from doing the most outlandish shit is just being designed in a way that is mildly inconvenient.
It's also utterly depressing that the reason things don't improve is usually just because making those improvements would be mildly inconvenient in the meantime.
Studying wildlife conservation, and a lot of the studying on presenting findings to the government for policy decisions or to Garner public support is how to make it sound convincing. The key to it is to make it more convenient that whatever they are currently used to doing. That's it. If you can do that, you're almost guaranteed to get your policies passed.
Everyone's discussing ODing on OTC pain meds but the bigger part of this story is why he's in so much pain for so long without being able to see a Dr and receive treatment for chronic pain.
even vitamin gummies can be overdosed to a dangerous degree. Hell, even too much water can kill you, it's difficult to achieve but it can flush out all the nutrients from your body. Always make sure to know how much of anything is safe to put in your body
not vitamin A but i personally can't have the vitamin C megadoses available in pharmacies. Apprently my body needs less vitamin C than most people, normally it's very hard to have too much of it, but when i take a megadose like 1000mg (daily recommended is ~100mg) i get incredibly painful stomach cramps, whilst everyone around me is just fine
My brother in Christ, the paracetamol box LITERALLY says to never go more than 4 grams (4000 mg) in a 24hs period on any mg pills presentation
And as far as I see, that's a general rule with everything. Even those caramels for sore throat or reflux pills, where you'd need to eat thousands in a day to overdose, say the same
Off the shelf in the UK, they're sold in packs of either 8 or 16 tablets, and shops are legally only allowed to sell you two packs at once. Pharmacies can of course supply larger quantities with a prescription.
The recommended dose is one or two 500mg tablets every 4 hours with a maximum of 8 tablets per day.
Yeah, I think this is what's causing the confusion here. We don't measure pills in "packets" in the US, so I think some people are taking "4 packets" to mean that they only took four pills and of course that's absurd.
I think in UK paracetamol is sold over the counter in 28 x 500mg tablets most commonly.
Larger packs or higher strengths are prescription only I think.
So 1 pack should last 3.5 days at the max adult dose of 8 per 24h - but I think it'd recommend seeing your doctor if you get into a second pack and you're still using that maximum dosage.
Generally shops will limit sales to 2 packs, but it's easy to shop around so that's no limit.
How much is a "packet"?
edit: never mind, I found several conflicting answers in the other comments, no need to add even more and add to the confusion.
Isn't this why they specifically put acetaminophen in opioid+nsaid prescription painkillers, instead of ibuprofen or aspirin or naproxen? Just to discourage abuse because if you take too much it'll destroy your liver. Has always seemed a bit fucked up to me.
I think the reason is that both acetaminophen and opioids are processed by the liver and that acetaminophen will overwhelm it allowing more time for opioids to be effective.
You can take acetaminophen and nsaids together because they work differently and are processed differently.
But, if you're a heavy drinker, both are dangerous for very different reasons. Liver vs digestive tract.
This is one aspect which is stupid, agreed, and based on a terrible and possibly willful misunderstanding of how addiction works. It’s also based on an assumption that the average person is educated on medicine in a way that is wholly out of touch with reality (“you mean the average person doesn’t know the max dose of acetaminophen off hand and keep meticulous track of dosage? But I do that, of course, I’m a doctor/pharmacist”)
but in addition there is added pain relief from the combo of acetaminophen + hydrocodone/oxycodone vs the opioid on its own so there is some justification for it outside of punitive approach for addicts. If you’re going to prescribe both anyway after something like a broken arm or wisdom tooth extraction there are also benefits to this: cheaper overall to just have one pill, easier to manage for the patient, etc
not sure what you mean by opioid+nsaid prescription painkillers, so I'll assume it's a mix of opiods plus NSAIDs. wouldn't make much sense to add aspirin/naproxen/ibuprofen on top of that, as they are also NSAIDs and that role's already been filled
paracetamol is also a fairly good painkiller so my guess is they're probably going for some synergy there as well
Ex alcoholic and “cirrhosis survivor” here. (I hate that latter term.)
I’m stunned that this situation went down how it did.
I had the full jaundice package when I finally went into the hospital and agreed to detox. I was told I would have to be booze-free for a minimum of six months to be considered for a transplant of any kind; both my liver and kidneys were in concerning shape.
They told me the timeframe for actually being considered was more like two years; there’s basically a board of trustees for each state, they review every case requesting an organ transplant and decide who gets what. (It’s literally a death panel, haha.)
No matter how good I was/am, I would still be at the very lowest priority. They’d have to have available livers as far as the eye can see for me to have a realistic chance. There is no actual chance I would ever get a donor liver, and I don’t want one.
I was dumb. I did it completely to myself. It’s not as simple as “you could’ve quit anytime you wanted,” trying to do that with alcohol is extraordinarily dangerous, BUT I did indeed do this to myself. It would be galactic levels of unethical and immoral for me to be trying to take a donor liver away from ANYONE.
I have since recovered way past the expectations of any medical personnel who worked on me during that time. July 1 will be two years alcohol-free for me.
My point in all of this is that I’m honestly having trouble believing this guy got this transplant at all, let alone so fast.
ITT: People who don't know the difference between acute and chronic ODs and how a smaller amount over a long period can hurt you. 325mg APAP x4 will not kill you short term.
The problem was taking it every day over a long period.
I think the problem here is the word "packet" and what that means here exactly. Would be much more clear if they listed the amount of mg, or at the very least, how many pills are in a "packet"
I'm like 99% sure they took way more than just 4 Tylenol.
I've only ever seen "packets" contain two pills or capsules. 325x2x4= 2,600mg or 2.6g, well below the 8g average one time adult OD dose.
Taking less than 3g a day for <3 days is fine, although if you're needing that much you probably should see a medical professional about something more tailored to your type of pain.
Really though way too many people in general have the idea pain killers of any type should remove all pain and in many cases, that's not realistic without long term health complications.
Edit: lemmy did not like me using asterisks for multiplication.
Are you in the US too? Because I've only ever seen 2 pills in anything resembling a "packet" here as well.
However, other comments here seem to be implying that "packet" might have a different meaning in this context in Europe, with some suggesting it could be referring to an entire blister pack...
Just by the context in the OP itself, the implication is that this person took an absolute shit load of acetaminophen. Seemed to imply more than "just" 8 pills, which is still a lot but as you say, doesn't seem like enough for an acute OD.
So I'm wondering if they have packets with more than just 2 pills over there.
In the US, the FDA tried to limit how strong the individual capsules can be (325mg), but you can still buy it in 500mg strength. There are mandatory warnings on the label, but you can buy it in 500-tablet (at 325 or 500) bottles over the counter. It took almost 60 years before the FDA did anything, so a lot of people grew up thinking it was harmless.
Hah, im a psycho so i usually rawdog everything you would have to take painkillers for. Also i prefer not to get addicted to painkillers but thankfully that is pretty rare here in europe especially compared to the us.
I mean if my doctor says that i have to take something i do but i usually ask if taking pain killers are necessary and its usually only for the pain. There are also painkillers that are anti-inflammatory and of course i take those.
Opioids make me physically ill and do not interact with my system well at all so I avoid them as much as I possibly can. I take it as a blessing that it puts me away from addiction risk, but it sucks when the rare Tylenol (acetaminophen/paracetamol) doesn’t cut it as my asthma makes NSAIDs a no-go.
Still, I’ll take swearing-pain over dizziness and breathing issues. Been tempted to take a knife to the problem areas myself though.
My daughter's dog that is a climber got on a shelf and knocked a basket off that had a large bottle of Tylenol in it. She chewed the bottle up.
I got home and saw some pills and a demolished bottle on the ground. Vet tech friend said to induce vomiting with hydrogen peroxide.
Didn't have any of that, but I did have some minty mouthwash with peroxide and no xylitol in it. Dog willingly drank it, puked with foam, drank a bit more, puked more foam, then I dug through the mess.
No pills or any sign of the color on the pills. She's still kicking.
As far as I understand it, you shouldn't put peroxide on most, or maybe even any, wounds. It indiscriminately kills good and bad bacteria as well as your body's cells. So it can make the wound take much longer to heal.
Similar, but I think different, with iodine. You shouldn't use it in most cases.
The recommendation is to use warm soapy water to rinse/clean the wound really good. That's all.
If the wound is deep enough or gnarly enough that this doesn't seem reasonable? Well, peroxide wasn't gonna help you anyway, go to the doctor.
I'm happy to be wrong here, to be corrected. But this is how I understand it.
Also I do keep peroxide in my cupboard, as well as rubbing alcohol. Their uses just aren't for wounds.
Peroxide is actually a pretty terrible wound cleanser. Does as much damage to the healing tissue as to any bacteria, which is why you seldom see it used in the hospital. Honestly you are better off with lots of clean warm water and mild soap. If you really want to get wild, find some true antibacterial soap with chlorhexidine (hibiclens is the big brand name in the US) and wash the wound with that. Just don't use it on the face bc it's really bad for the eyes.
I grew up on a farm. every cut, stab, or scrape was done on some rusty, shit caked, dirty metal thing or some sharp blade covered in blood. so peroxide was always used because the risk of some bacteria left behind for infection was greater than the risk of scar tissue.
my wounds heal pretty quickly, so it's not something I've had to deal with.
Just because we do something for a long time doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. In most cases, forceful irrigation with sterile saline is the best way to handle a dirty wound.
I had a wisdom tooth come in, smash itself against the molar next to it, and then start grinding the nerves together.
Literally blinding pain, like my vision went white and it overrode every other sensation in my body.
That being said, what ultimately helped me cope was a maximum does of ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Fair warning, I am not a doctor, and I was a young healthy man with no liver issues. I was able to take both at the same time and it cut the pain. The two meds work in different ways that compliment each other. This is not a long-term solution, this was to last 3 days for a dental appointment to have both teeth pulled.
but then you combine differently acting painkillers, not just take 20 times the safe dose of one O.o
like Ibuprofren and Paracetamol can be safely combined up to their allowed doses, which is what I did after surgery, spaced them out to half-time between each other's next allowed pill 🤷
I had intense tummy aches for 15 days where I couldn't walk and needed to keep heat to my belly to even function, once my pain killers didn't work, I didn't push it, I just tried to handle the pain
I cried a lot in that time, it fucking sucked, but it sure was better than liver failure.
~~In a family of five, how often would I have to go to the pharmacy under that rule? Keep in mind that menstrual pain is a thing. Or would that just be the cheat code to get a dangerous dose?
How would the different online pharmacies know how often I told that story? Or does your proposal just mean "increased shipping cost"?
Don't think that's practical at all.~~
edit: Post I'm replying to wasn't talking about amounts at all. They are correct.
I don't know what that would change? You go to the pharmacy, say you have a family of five and menstrual pain? Nobody said anything about limiting the amount of drugs to buy.
Oh sorry maybe I misunderstood. Yes, paracetmol and other painkillers should only be sold in pharmacies. This is the case in Germany but you can buy essentially as much as you want if you tell them it's for multiple people.
Can you just buy them in a supermarket in the US?
edit: nvm, you're from DE as well. Again, sorry for misreading.
i really don't want to live in a society where every move of a literate person is questioned because there's illiterate people roaming around.
There's clear dosage information in that leaflet inside every single paracetamol box. If you're emptying a box a day (let alone 4 boxes a day) and don't bother checking if that's safe then this is entirely on you
As shown above, they don't read the label. Ironically, you didn't even read the screenshot that's the cause of all of this - which disproves your point entirely.
Yeah, problem is people cannot be relied upon to read the label. People are idiots. So it's a good suggestion to put a gatekeeper (pharmacist) in front of the dangerous stuff to walk people through the dangers verbally.
Yeah that's what US Americans call "freedom", but in other places that's not what it means. Where do you draw the line? Should people be allowed to buy opiods from the supermarket?
In all seriousness though providing drug users a route to buying drugs that were safely and reliably manufactured would both significantly lower harm and significantly limit the impact of cartels (see how they switched to controlling avocado trades as they are now losing the ultra lucrative marijuana market). Further, by not forcing users to go underground for their trade you could not connect them to resources for rehabilitation much more easily and earlier in the process of addiction
So yes you should unironically be able to buy safely manufactured heroin and cocaine and fentanyl in a store. Maybe not the grocery store, but a store
To prevent you from using medicine that's less effective. Doctors want your to have a certain concentration in your blood to be within the therapeutic window. If the concentration is too low you won't have the desired effect on you.
It's mostly out of caution, just as the date is shorter than it could be to be extra safe.
Let's say the maximum recommended dose is the "dangerous dose." That's 4 grams. 20x4=80 grams of paracetamol/acetaminophen. That's like 160 goddamn pills
Sorry, I was very tired - however, having taken ibuprofen for years - 2 pills will not give me the same pain relief as it did 10 years ago. I have to up it to 3, or 4. I'm not sure if this is tolerance or an increase in inflammation resulting in a need for a higher dose (hoping not).
Not that I would know, but don't all medications build up tolerance?
Like, I was under the impression that medicinal benefits are like a side-effect to what the body might otherwise consider a foreign pathogen. Does acetaminophen not trigger any immune response?
With some exceptions for medications that use the immune system to target therapy (such as monoclonal antibodies) or drugs that target the immune system specifically, there is no immune response to most medications.
You wont build a tolerance unless you're using it constantly. A few days for a pain a few times a year is meaningless for tolerance. As long as you RTFM, the hospital dose will always exceed your tolerance.
This doesn't apply to opioids but I'd argue people make too big a deal about those as well, just don't do them outside a prescription nor recreationally. You're probably more addicted to taking a shit every now and then unless your life is already in the drain.
Sounds like a messaging problem, despite the idiocy (or rather, because idiocy is the default). Like, I'm not silly enough to eat 4 boxes of paracetamol a day, but I've also read maybe 3 medication leaflets in my entire life, and I've been on literally dozens of antidepressants and antianxiety meds. I basically scan over the leaflet to see what sort of dick problems I can expect 😆
It's like the Terms of Service of an iTunes update. No cunt is reading that shit. People just know "i make click i get music", and "i swallow lump of chalk i feel better".
The leaflets aren't even written for laypeople to really understand them. Besides being in a 1pt font, they're written in something bordering on legalese but with medical terms. "Contraindications"?? The fuck am I, Beatrice Pharmacist the inventor of pharmacism? I don't blame people for getting 2 sentences in and giving up.
That said, the dosage is on the front of the box, and that should be enough for even the most imbecilic person. But if you lose the box and just have loose blister packs lying around for a year, you might go off the rails a little when the tooth pain kicks in.
It's also the case that something as "basic" as paracetamol being such a widespread and easy-to-buy medication causes a strange lack of respect for its potential danger. Like "pop a pill when you have a headache" is so second nature to us. It becomes a non-threatening intervention that only becomes less threatening the older you get, because it's just... there. So you don't even feel the need to check the leaflet for side effects and such, because it's 'part of the furniture' of our lives. This is the messaging problem I alluded to. You really gotta think about the dumbest person alive, and then aim for someone twice as dumb as that.
Just tell them you believe a billionaires earn their money, climate change is a hoax to sell books, and the solution to mass shootings is to sell more guns to more people.
You know, express the nonsensical opinions only a well deluded American is propagandized from birth to express with a straight face when they should be embarrassed at their belligerent ignorance.
American here: I know paracetamol is acetaminophen, but how much is a packet?
It looks like it's a sheet of 6-8 pills
https://www.nps.org.au/news/paracetamol-ibuprofen-combinations-for-acute-pain
according to the acetaminophen i've got at home, dangerous dosage is >4g per day. that means that if 4 packets was 20x that, each packet would be 20g, which, if they're normal 500mg pills, would be 40 pills per packet.
And a maximum of 2g/day if you weigh under 50kg (which not a lot of people know).
you should stick to 3g a day if you’re overall a small person, some bottles will recommend this as the max to be safe
Therapeutic dose of acetaminophen is 15 mg/kg q6h prn. That dose of 4g/day ==> 1g/dose. 1000mg/(15mg/kg) = 66.67kg == 145lb.
That's the minimum weight for that acetaminophen dosing. If you're under that weight, you can consider the reduced dose. If you're over 145lb, no need to worry. And honestly, I think I'm the only one who actually doses this stuff q6h anyway. I think most people end up doing TID dosing because that allows uninterrupted sleep.
3-4000mg is toxic to the liver.
Various countries limit painkillers to small packet sizes (e.g. 20 pills here in Germany) and pharmacies only hand them out one at a time, so you can't overdose as easily/spontaneously, either like the person in the post did due to pain, or for suicidal purposes.
It's not perfect protection, as you can just go to multiple pharmacies to buy multiple packets, but yeah, you will have to actually go do that and will get told at the pharmacy that you shouldn't take more, if you're not aware.
Yikes! The use of the term "packet" was initially confusing to me. Here in the States it's not uncommon to see small packets of a single dose of over the counter medicines in gas stations and convenience stores for when you're not at home and something comes up. The directions for extra strength Tylenol are 2 every 6hrs (1000mg dose) not exceeding 3 doses per day.
I was thinking "4 packets over 3 days, what's the big deal?"
Worth noting as well that the OP said four packs a day for three days.
i heard some people fitness takes these so they can train excessively longer than normal. it was a news article a certain group was discussing, and they were tellinig a story of a dude doing that, that guy got addicted for sure to the pain meds, because they said he couldnt do anything without them.
they sell blister packs for tyelenol, but its usually thr brand name, which is pretty expensive.
America... I remember seeing "value packs" of Tylenol containing 300 pills... that's their idea of freedom... to allow people the choice of slow and agonizing suicide by liver failure
Ironically, for America, this is one area where you are expected to read the label and not be an absolute idiot.
Exactly, I know I can take 2 a day and a couple days and if the pain persists I ought to seek out medical help.
We know how to follow directions, we’re just not fucking gonna
The bottle on my shelf has 350 (new, Costco brand) but I don't take over the recommended dose for obvious reasons. Guess it expired last year now that I look heh. The smaller bottles cost more per dose so no reason not buy a larger one. This is in Canada, not the US for people curious about other countries.
That math doesn't quite add up. Sure less per dose sounds good, but if you're wasting half the bottle then paying a little more per dose but less total cost is still more economical.
i buy the larger ones online. better than buying the small ones. i do this for anti-histamines too, because i got allergies, i can get 1000tablets for the 1st generations easy, and cheaper pricing for the 2nd generation ones years worth. kirkland has the quality to it, im trying some off-brand(probably chinese made) doesnt seem as effective, and it was a wierd shape.
It may be less effective but you use it till the bottle is done, it's not like milk it still works.
I wouldn't do that because i can't find any information on what that stuff breaks down when it ages and whether toxicity actually goes up over time
they sell larger bulk bottles, usually i buy them on amazon, in-stores are usually more expensive. i also use naproxen too.
kids were trying to robotrip on dextrotomorphan, and now they require ID to buy any cold medicine that contains it.
Well, generally you're only supposed to take ~2 tablets at a time, so 10? 40 pills a day is 13,000mg of acetaminophen, or 20,000mg if they're extra strength.
That's, uh, bad. You're recommended to take under 4000mg per day, so that'd be a bit over a packet? Makes sense to me.
For the record, mixing two painkillers without consulting a doctor is also usually a bad idea but way fucking less of a bad idea than taking 13000mg of tylenol in a day. Afaik, acetaminophen with other stuff is probably fine but napoxen, ibuprofen, and aspirin all work roughly the same way and shouldn't be mixed.
Basically, if something hurts so much that you might take enough paracetamol/acetaminophen to fuck with your liver then you yes, you should be under a doctor's care. That said, between my wife and me, we've had three or four doctors over the years all be very chill with the idea of alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen after surgery or the like. I guess they work on such different chemical pathways that they don't have much interaction potential, and keeping under the daily dose of Tylenol in particular is incredibly important, as we've seen in this thread.
They act on different systems, yes, but this is more about the metabolism of each.
Non-steroidal-anti-inflamatorirs can cause damage to your stomach and kidneys.
Acetaminophen/Paracetol metabolizes in the liver a similar way alcohol does, and like alcohol has a maximum rate of clearing the toxin.
That's not always an option, unfortunately, but it's definitely accurate.
tyelonol works on the liver, the others like ibuprofen, naproxen,,,etc works by inhibiting the cox1 and 2 enzymes. of courses take 2 much of the inhibitors is very similar to aspirin, it can prevent clotting(which in itself is a therapeuthic uses for clotting disorders)
Don't take my word for it but I think paracetamol and ibuprofen with added codeine can be taken together despite the double codeine as the amount they have is low enough that double is still safe.
Check with a pharmacist first, dosages are going to vary and I am just some guy on the internet.
I don't think there's a standard size, but I know they sell them in packages of 3x10 where I live. Eating 4 full packets of those in a day would put you at 15 times the upper recommended daily dosage, for what it's worth, which is calculated slightly conservatively to not be lethal for any adults
You can also often get high-strength pills for chronic pain that are 665mg instead of the regular 500mg.
I believe I've seen them sold in 1g pills where I live as well.
the ones for arthiritis, is around 625mg, with caffiene. i had 500mg naproxen Rx for buristis once, it can cause stomach issues, because it turns on inflammation, so the acid levels increase and can cause things like heartburns.
Depends on the country I guess.
Here, a packet is 16 tablets of 500mg (acetaminophen) or 200mg (ibuprofen).
We're limited to 2 packets combined per purchase to reduce the chances of severe overdose.
Package dosing generally suggests 2 tablets per dose, with at least 4 hours between.
Or one tablet for children between 10 and 14.
Reading the meme it seems like a packet is five times the dangerous dosage.
That guys a moron. The bottles are very very clear not to take more than the recommended dosage. Its labeled all over the bottle.
I'm kind of pissed that such obvious and preventable idiocy leads to an almost immediate liver transplant.
Yes, that's just a lucky coincidence for him, but still...
in english, french, spanish, and sometimes german.
Did you ever stop to consider that this person was in so much pain with no other alternatives that they might have done so out of desperation rather than simple ignorance?
If you're in that much pain, you go to the hospital, you dont overdose on Tylenol. This isn't a sympathy thing. And based on the response they gave the doctor, it was an ignorance thing.
I've been in this position before. Sent home from hospital twice to "take some paracetamol". Third time I went in they pumped my stomach because of how much paracetamol I had taken, and finally gave me some actual painkillers.
When you are in debilitating pain, side-effects are not something that you particularly care about.
Side effects like death?
With the amount of pain i was in, i didn't care. Death was 100% on the table as a viable alternative.
That sucks, I hope you are doing well
Holy shit. It's almost like there are systemic barriers that would prevent them from having access to healthcare.
Not everyone can afford a doctor. Welcome to the reality of what people have to go through just to get through their day.
It is entirely an empathy thing, and you lack it.
Typed a whole thing put and then deleted it. Not even going to bother. You're making inferences you just cant make from the post. I agree, there are systemic barriers to Healthcare, this isn't that.
Not "even paracetamol". ESPECIALLY paracetamol.
Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol is both weak ass painkiller and really dangerous because the overdose line is low. Here they put it in synthetic opioid drugs, it doesn't help with pain but does make them more dangerous.
oh yea it isnt as good as other otc nsaids, like ibuprofen and naproxen, or aspirin. oh and that fake pseudoephedrine mimic(phenyleprine) for cogestion, they already said it has no effect whatsoever. its mostly the 1st generation antihistamines doing all the work for your sinuses when you have the cold anyways.
The do different things. It all depends on the type of "pain".
It’s good at reducing fever
Opioids are fir suffering whereas acetaminophen is for pain signals. A combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen have been demonstrated to be the most effective pain killer we currently have.
Pain and suffering are different things.
It might not get you high, but it absolutely does help actual pain when combined with opioids.
PSA: stupidity is dangerous
Yeah, how long until this idiot cooks this liver too?
Honestly, getting a liver transplant in a week is the most unbelievable part of this story.
Happened to me. It was actually 6 days. Listed on a Friday, transplant was done the following Wednesday.
Wild
It really just depends on how sick you are, and where you are, at least in the US.
For liver they use something called a MELD score. Kidney they use GFR, maybe other things, not as sure on that.
Where matters because the US is broken into transplant regions and you can only receive an organ for a region where you've been listed.
That's why, if you have money, you could go to a couple regions and get listed, then travel wherever the first organ is available.
In this particular case it was probably pretty important to transplant quickly, otherwise his kidneys likely would have failed.
This man's life drastically changed because he made a really poor decision.
Here's to hoping that I never have to find out first hand.
Just a literal Life Pro Tip for anyone still reading, sign up for organ donation. It will cost you nothing, the urban myths about hospitals harvesting the organs out of "locked in" locked in donors are total BS, but the lives you can save are very real.
Stupidity? The dude is living in constant pain from dental issues and was just trying to not suffer.
Desperation is not stupidity.
Someone didn't get a live because it was used for this dumbass
People who make mistakes deserve to live too. Don't be like that. We've all done stupid shit, he just happened to kill his liver with this one.
It isn't "natural selection" when it was caused by systemic issues preventing the man from receiving adequate dental healthcare.
It's bizarre to me that someone can make it to adulthood without knowing that paracetamol specifically is no fucking joke.
People look up resources on them and see that the recommended max dose of ibuprofen is lower than paracetamol per day in weight of the active ingredient and stop reading.
They don't get to the part about how the effect per weight isn't the same. Or how damaging paracetamol can be for the liver if you take it regularly or go over the recommend limit. Heavy drinkers especially don't take into account the extra stress on their liver, which is a contributor to the 400-500 deaths it causes every year in the US alone.
Meanwhile ibuprofen makes you feel sick and want to vomit once you start to go over the recommended limit. And if you reach that stage, you basically just stay hydrated to keep your kidneys going and wait for it to pass. Since it usually takes another 2-3 times as much to for the severe effects to occur.
To quote Scrubs:
And in the pilot episode, it was J.D. and regular strength Tylenol.
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is definitely tough on the liver. I remember during EMT classes (well, I kinda remember, was 20 years ago) having one of the paramedics in the class talking about how it was worse on the liver than heroin. Now yes, heroin obviously has other downsides, but it's just crazy to think about. I have always limited my intake of it, never take it if I've been drinking, that sort of thing. The issue is that it's not exactly common knowledge. I know plenty of people who would drink and take some Tylenol at bedtime to kill the hangover. Not a good habit.
It's not common knowledge?
Not in the US.
On an informal survey of several hundred men aged 18 to 60 at or below the income cutoff for recieving free medical insurance from the state they were living in, less than 10% knew Tylenol was bad for your liver at all and just over 25% knew that long term ibuprofen use was bad for kidneys.
The number goes up when income does, but considering the number of people working for minimum wage over here...
We have a culture of ADVERTISING medication here, every possible attempt at minimizing public knowledge of medical side effects is made at every legal turn because fear cuts profits.
Edit -- I should add that I've met multiple educated people who heard that the Brits had some super dangerous liver killing over the counter painkiller that they just LET people have who were glad we didn't allow that kind of nonsense here.
Very few people know what paracetamol is and would be surprised to learn it's another name for Tylenol.
It's common knowledge, in the same way that "you shouldn't text and drive" is common knowledge. People know it, and ignore it
I would say most people are like this. Knowing it's super dangerous in high doses is the minority because it's sold OTC and everyone knows and trusts it.
not everyone studies drugs
there is a stark difference between "studies drugs" and "does the bare minimum research on the pharmaceuticals one puts into their body"
It is absolutely imperative that you understand the safety profile of ANY substance entering your body.
I was about to make a joke about understanding the safety profile of the air you breathe, and then I remembered I work near various chemicals... Mfs have mixed clorox and lysol at my workplace before. Safety is no joke
not following safety is frequently funny, almost no safety procedures are funny, not following safety wins.
I was taught this as an actual child because it's so important and paracetamol is so common. It's nothing to do with "studying drugs".
I mean this is just dumb. Like I’m sorry but this would happen with basically every medicine or drug. They aren’t made to be taken at higher doses than advised.
(Imagine you took 8 liters of beer per day for 3 days, you’d be half dead too.)
Moderation people…
You haven't seen the ridiculous quantities that some alcoholics will consume
Tolerance is a different beast. But 8 liters of beer is ridiculous.
Humans drink 2-3 liters a day. Of water.
8 liters is like average for Oktoberfest visitors
It all comes back up.
Yup. Didn't say it was good for them
Should*
Paramedic here, once brought someone in who ended up having a blood alcohol of .64. Dude got to sober up in the ICU.
On the medical board exams, you get questions talking about patients that drink pints or liters of liquor every day and you're expected to know all the various health problems that come with alcohol use disorder.
We don't do that in Eastern Europe™
You know what else is stupid? Pain management in the US. I get that you need to be careful about addiction, but the idea that people should have to suffer pain because we're having a pain medication "reefer madness" spasm is idiocy.
The guy just kept taking them until his teeth stopped hurting. Why is the alternative that he just has to put up with being in pain?
The fact that the drug companies lied about the addictiveness of their product so doctors were handing them out like candy didn't help.
Yeah, it was rampant here in Jersey, and we're definitely still feeling the effects. Things that didn't need opiates got opiates. And guess what? Lotta people all of a sudden need them for life. And it wasn't just Oh, here's your script. Doctors were knowingly abusing it for profit. So like with most things in life, some people ruin it for everyone else.
Yes it is. I have had, over my 40 years as migraineuse (they started in my teens) 5 intractable migraines. Meaning less than once every 5 years I get one that lasts days, I cannot eat or drink, just puke. I used to be able to go to my doctor and get shot up with opiates and Phenergan, so much of it, they would do one dose, come back later, another, another, another, until finally I would say "it still hurts but I don't care" and go home nodding like a junkie, sleep and wake up with no headache, and, importantly, NO desire for more drugs.
Now the opiates are not allowed because they didn't work. But nothing works on the status migraine. Now they give you a cold cocktail IV of some sort of Advil and nausea medicine and it doesn't work either, and costs $2,000 because it can only be done in the emergency room not the doctor office.
It's adding insult to injury. There has to be some way to make these available for acute situations at least.
I worked with a middle-aged women once who had a variety of health problems - she wheeled an oxygen tank around the office with her - who told me she got a migraine during puberty and had had it ever since.
My wife has gotten migraine with aura since her teens, but thankfully only once every couple of months, and they tapered off to a couple times a year when she hit around 40. Her mom was opposed to allopathic medicine, so my wife never got anything stronger than sugar pills. They were bad; she'd last in bed crying and screaming, if she wasn't at the toilet dry-heaving.
Sometime after we married, she started trying all of the various migraine meds, like Imitrex; nothing worked reliably after the first couple of times, and now she keeps Vicodin in her purse. She uses, maybe, 20mg once every couple of months, and it mostly does like you say: she says it still hurts some, but she doesn't care.
I will hurt the person who tries to take that from her.
I will offer hope. Menopause, regrettably did not help, they got less intense (which I didn't know was a thing, when the doctor used to ask I would get confused could only say worse than childbirth, they were all 11 on a scale of 10, but after menopause they were more like 6/10) and more frequent.
But
Menopause plus MHT (low dose of estrogen and progesterone, same amount every day) has knocked out nearly all of them.
So if she is menopausal and still getting them, she might want to try the MHT - it's only meant to manage symptoms (migraine could be one) not get your blood level up to any target.
And yeah I remember how it was before I could afford any medical care, I often thought death would be relief. Migraine is the worst pain I have experienced, and I have had natural births, lost loved ones, broken bones - nothing has come close to a bad migraine. And all were bad until menopause.
Our GP is recommending that. She's (my wife) is not quite there, and isn't eager to force menopause. She still gets her visitor.
I'll pass that along, though; it'll only be a few more years, at most.
It was an unexpected benefit, birth control pills made mine so much worse I was reluctant to try the MHT, but it has made a remarkable difference, I feel really good, and not dreading a migraine is probably a big part of that.
Imitrex by injection did work for mine about 95% of the time, I am really sorry it didn't work for your wife. It's incredible when it works, no drugged feeling just awful feeling rush then easing of pain until no headache.
We have never had good pain management here. Claiming babies can't feel pain, black people hace higher pain tolerance, etc etc. then we swung into really permissive use with oxycodone for a while.
Yeah, I've dealt with massive tooth pain before. Given a choice between going through a week of that pain, and maybe killing myself with pills, I'll take my chances with the pills.
Pain isn't an unhealthy condition & it won't kill you. Medicine isn't supposed to eliminate pain entirely especially if it conflicts with medical treatment or promotes unhealthy dependence on painkillers.
Pain is definitely not a vital sign & those pain face scales & the like are propaganda brought to you by pharmaceutical lobbyists instead of hard medical science. Americans have uncritically played into some strange ideas without asking where they came from.
You don't suffer chronic pain, do you?
We can't cure migraines. We can't cure cancer. We can't cure back pain. We can't cure a lot of stuff that causes recurring pain in people, for whom pain isn't a warning but a useless life impediment.
The body is not a perfect machine, and we don't understand or know how to fix most of the problems with it.
Off-topic: the topic is a toothache, which is usually curable.
There are medical guidelines for chronic pain management, and leaping to dangerous, addictive substances aren't that. There's pain catastrophizing to watch out for. There are multi-disciplinary approaches recommended before turning to prescriptions.
Despite not suffering more pain than other nationalities, Americans had been taking disproportionately more pain pills than the rest of the world. There is something wrong with the mentality that treats medicine as an exercise of pain satisfaction rather than pain management & imagines that patients need to live pain-free despite the dangers.
During the opioid crisis, articles like this had belabored that point repeatedly & explained where the industry went wrong.
Is this real? Who gets a liver donor in 4 days?
The liver damage is very believable but a liver transplant after 4 days is absurd.
The only way it happened is if people who need a liver but not because of alcohol-related damage are pushed to the top of the list. The alcoholics would basically be last in line. Some might say that's discriminatory, but it's perfectly normal to triage patients and provide care to the ones with more immediate needs, or the ones most likely to survive. Doctors have to make judgement calls.
Or even need a liver transplant in this situation.
The liver heals itself so removing the paracetamol that caused the failure would allow the liver to begin that healing process.
Four packs of Paracetamol will fuck up your liver beyond repair. Downing a blisterpack in one go can already kill you, let alone four.
It wasn't even 4 packs, it was at least 12 packs, probably a bit more. Also how many are in a pack?
No organ magically heals itself, you're not Wolverine. Liver damage is permanent, any dosage over 4 grams of paracetamol per 24 hours (typically four doses of two 500mg tablets) can cause liver damage. Let the damage accumulate, and you'll go into liver failure. If the liver fails, you'll have to hope you're lucky enough to get a donor, or you'll be counting down hours left in your life. Take good care of your body and be healthy, your older self will thank you.
Why would it be magic? My skin heals itself. Bones heal themselves...
There are at least 2 organs that heal. First is your skin, if you consider that an organ. Wounds heal and often leave scars as a lasting reminder of the damage that was there.
The other organ is the liver, the scar tissue that occurs in the liver after healing is called cirrhosis.
Time is the factor you're missing.
When the liver is damaged it stops doing it's function. Removing the paracetamol doesn't remove the damage, so the the liver is still not functioning. It would take a long time to recover the liver function after you've stopped taking the paracetamol. You can only live days without a functioning liver.
Hence, you're dead.
I think what's extra dangerous about Tylenol is that it doesnt feel like it's doing anything. When it works, some minor pain goes away, or maybe your fever goes down. But there's no side effects that you really feel, so I bet people get a false sense of security with it. Like, oh it isn't giving me opioid euphoria, or knocking me out. And you can just buy as much as you want, no restrictions. It must be perfectly safe.
Tylenol: that's a brand of paracetamol for non US people.
Nothing is perfectly safe. You can kill yourself with water poisoning, and that's pumped directly into your house.
There is a brand mixing acetylsalicylic acid and koffein which works wonders as a quick relief for migraine while my standard naproxen usually requires a few hours of darkness to start working, so I can't agree that all over the counter meds are garbage. I can't refute your placebo claims since the effect cant be measured by myself
I got a heart transplant about 18 hours after being added to the list.
Got lucky I suppose, as "lucky" as waiting or someone to die so you can live can be. They did warn me it could be weeks before I hear anything.
edit- I was also pretty high priority (or whatever it might be referred to as) being in my early 30's when it happened, not a drug user, and generally take good care of myself.
Unemployed. Had some extremely helpful people get me on state assistance while I was being treated.
Depends, who's your liver guy?
Fake story
He's not the first one to 'kill his liver' with paracetamol/ acetominophen (tylenol). First case I recall, the person was taking tylenol nightly with a glass of wine. Here's some links on the current understanding of Liver injury and paracetamol:
Apparently it's not always overdosing: Paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity at recommended dosage (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2796.2003.01097.x)
Acetaminophen-Induced Hepatotoxicity: a Comprehensive Update (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4913076/) "...in the United States, in particular, it accounts for more than 50% of overdose-related acute liver failure and approximately 20% of the liver transplant cases."
Risk Factors for Hepatotoxicity Due to Paracetamol Overdose in Adults (https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/57/8/752) "In the univariable analysis, significant hepatotoxicity risk factors were male gender, alcohol abuse, an ingested paracetamol dose, and a timespan from ingestion to hospital admission. The later one was the only significant risk factor in the multivariable model (adjusted odds ratio 1.08; 95% CI: 1.03–1.12)."
Paracetamol (acetaminophen) overdose and hepatotoxicity: mechanism, treatment, prevention measures, and estimates of burden of disease (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37436926/) "Where data were available, we estimate that paracetamol is involved in 6% of poisonings, 56% of severe acute liver injury and acute liver failure, and 7% of drug-induced liver injury."
Understanding paracetamol-induced liver failure (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-014-3293-9)
He's lucky it was just his liver. People who overdose or try to commit suicide with it are not in for a good time or quick death and after it's absorbed into your body it will cause a systemic shutdown of several organs like the kidneys and pancreas. Not just the liver, and there's absolutely no way to counteract this after that first 36 hours. You will die (you aren't getting all of the organs replaced) and it will take days before you succumb. No antidote or life support or anything can be done for you.
You'll feel fine the first day but may have some vomiting. By day 3 the jaundice and stomach pain sets in as the liver is first to show signs of the organs failure and it's no longer possible to counteract the drug. By the fourth day your organs start shutting down and you'll have much more pain and vomiting. All that can be done is get your affairs in order because you'll be dead and in pain while you wait around to die and regret your suicide.
I say suicide because it's almost always intentional. It usually takes 40 325mg pills to cause this, although the liver damage can be caused with 20+ pills in an adult, generally. If you think you've possibly overdosed get to the hospital quick and tell them what you've taken so they can start you on Acytylcystine. If you "feel fine" after the first day or so and think you're all good you may be wrong and when day Tyree rolls around and your feeling bad or jaundiced your liver is already wrecked and can't be fixed.
What's a better pill to kill yourself with?
Cyanide
That's extremely painful
Paracetamol overdoses are still worse though. Organ failure is long, painful and normally filled with regret.
Suicide by pills is a complete lottery unless you know the specific effects when taken in massive quantities. Most people don't and assume overdoses will just be extensions of regular doses. "It's a pain killer so I won't feel anything" is really dumb logic.
Just better, a rusty hammer
Difficult to eat such a mighty meal
Propofol I think?
I could definitely think of a couple, but if you kill yourself, you're letting trump win.
I'm not American
Oh don't be so hard on yourself. Wanting to die doesn't make you un-american.
Gonna need something stronger, noted.
It's people like this who make other people think any amount of painkillers is bad, and seem to get a sense of superiority about them for never taking any.
Even a little acetaminophen makes my liver feel funny the next day. Ibuprofen actually works for pain relief for me (migraines mostly) but it can cause stomach ulcers. Painkillers are definitely not something you can just use without thinking, and daily use especially can fuck your body up, ibuprofen is also hard on your kidneys.
Take the minimum effective dose as infrequently as possible.
did you ever check your liver? that doesnt sound normal. with a small dose.
nsaids can cause bleeding and ulcers if itsa high dose. its because it inhibits cox 1 and 2, for clotting, and it works on your stomach by turning off inflammation, so your stomach can combat the acid with more mucus and cell turnover(inflammation increases cell turnover), thats why h pylori is a thing.
Sounds like American healthcare to me.
You either cope, and probably cause irreparable hard to yourself, or you go to the clinic or ER and get labeled a drug seeker.
Americans don't call it paracematol, they call it acetaminophen or just tylenol. This is from the UK.
Oh, shit! Guy OD'd on acetaminophen? Yeah, that is scary. My wife had a friend that attempted a self KO with Tylenol for some reason. What a horrible way to go. She is so lucky she didn't need a transplant.
In LATAM the 3 are well known names for the same active medicines
fun fact, when you mix sinus medicines your blood can test positive for methamphetamine.
I know this because I am now on a list of meth addicts at every networked hospital after an er visit while treating a sinus infection.
they took four blood tests and "confirmed" I was high on meth and refused to treat why I was there in the first place because to them, I was high as shit. even though I was literally directing people around blood on the floor and calling for housekeeping to come clean up the blood on the floor because the nurse refused to do her fucking job.
I asked to be removed from the list as well as have the false test results removed from my history and was told that's impossible.
doesn't technology make things so much better? Now the best pain meds I'll ever get at a hospital will be extra strength Tylenol. you know, that shit I have at home they charge me $400 a pill for.
Pseudoephedrine is the main ingredient in meth, that's why they changed all the OTC sinus stuff to phenylephrine years ago, and why the OTC stuff doesn't work worth a damn anymore.
It's why in the UK shops won't sell more than 2 packets at a time. It's statistically reduced the amount of people killing themselves with them (intentionally or by mistake).
It’s OTC right? What’s stopping people from visiting multiple pharmacies?
Inconvenience
It is stupid scary how a lot of what prevents people from doing the most outlandish shit is just being designed in a way that is mildly inconvenient.
It's also utterly depressing that the reason things don't improve is usually just because making those improvements would be mildly inconvenient in the meantime.
Studying wildlife conservation, and a lot of the studying on presenting findings to the government for policy decisions or to Garner public support is how to make it sound convincing. The key to it is to make it more convenient that whatever they are currently used to doing. That's it. If you can do that, you're almost guaranteed to get your policies passed.
This is the reason why medication that can be used for self harm (including death) comes in blister packages and not in bottles.
Its inconvenient, and takes enough time to give your brain some more time to think
Nothing. However it adds a layer of difficulty to acquiring more. That, for a lot of people, is enough.
Technically nothing but even the fact that it is limited is a deterrent for buying too much, plus people are too lazy to visit multiple pharmacies.
Everyone's discussing ODing on OTC pain meds but the bigger part of this story is why he's in so much pain for so long without being able to see a Dr and receive treatment for chronic pain.
Some people are just stubborn about seeing doctors. My guess is that this is a british guy, and dental coverage under the NHS is spotty at best
I mean... Yeah. There are instructions on the packet. They aren't supposed to be eaten like candy.
even vitamin gummies can be overdosed to a dangerous degree. Hell, even too much water can kill you, it's difficult to achieve but it can flush out all the nutrients from your body. Always make sure to know how much of anything is safe to put in your body
Yup. I had a buddy give himself Vitamin A poisoning from eating gummy multivitamins like they were candy.
not vitamin A but i personally can't have the vitamin C megadoses available in pharmacies. Apprently my body needs less vitamin C than most people, normally it's very hard to have too much of it, but when i take a megadose like 1000mg (daily recommended is ~100mg) i get incredibly painful stomach cramps, whilst everyone around me is just fine
oh yea it causes the runs, and kidney stones. it doesnt seem as severe as vitamin A toxicity.
vitamin A specifically is toxic. not so much for vitamin D, since people are very deficient in vitamin d.
My brother in Christ, the paracetamol box LITERALLY says to never go more than 4 grams (4000 mg) in a 24hs period on any mg pills presentation
And as far as I see, that's a general rule with everything. Even those caramels for sore throat or reflux pills, where you'd need to eat thousands in a day to overdose, say the same
Don't fuck with medicine dudes
You're assuming he can read.
How big is a packet?
Off the shelf in the UK, they're sold in packs of either 8 or 16 tablets, and shops are legally only allowed to sell you two packs at once. Pharmacies can of course supply larger quantities with a prescription.
The recommended dose is one or two 500mg tablets every 4 hours with a maximum of 8 tablets per day.
ok that helps. Over here you can get a bottle of 100 or more at one.
Yeah, I think this is what's causing the confusion here. We don't measure pills in "packets" in the US, so I think some people are taking "4 packets" to mean that they only took four pills and of course that's absurd.
Asking the real questions.
Kinda surprised you didn't give some it answer
I think in UK paracetamol is sold over the counter in 28 x 500mg tablets most commonly. Larger packs or higher strengths are prescription only I think.
So 1 pack should last 3.5 days at the max adult dose of 8 per 24h - but I think it'd recommend seeing your doctor if you get into a second pack and you're still using that maximum dosage.
Generally shops will limit sales to 2 packs, but it's easy to shop around so that's no limit.
I don't know where you'd get packets of 28x500mg.
oops my memory failed.
It'd mostly be in 16s in the supermarket. So each pack is probably 2 days at the max dose.
How much is a "packet"? edit: never mind, I found several conflicting answers in the other comments, no need to add even more and add to the confusion.
Too much
Isn't this why they specifically put acetaminophen in opioid+nsaid prescription painkillers, instead of ibuprofen or aspirin or naproxen? Just to discourage abuse because if you take too much it'll destroy your liver. Has always seemed a bit fucked up to me.
I think the reason is that both acetaminophen and opioids are processed by the liver and that acetaminophen will overwhelm it allowing more time for opioids to be effective.
You can take acetaminophen and nsaids together because they work differently and are processed differently.
But, if you're a heavy drinker, both are dangerous for very different reasons. Liver vs digestive tract.
This is one aspect which is stupid, agreed, and based on a terrible and possibly willful misunderstanding of how addiction works. It’s also based on an assumption that the average person is educated on medicine in a way that is wholly out of touch with reality (“you mean the average person doesn’t know the max dose of acetaminophen off hand and keep meticulous track of dosage? But I do that, of course, I’m a doctor/pharmacist”)
but in addition there is added pain relief from the combo of acetaminophen + hydrocodone/oxycodone vs the opioid on its own so there is some justification for it outside of punitive approach for addicts. If you’re going to prescribe both anyway after something like a broken arm or wisdom tooth extraction there are also benefits to this: cheaper overall to just have one pill, easier to manage for the patient, etc
not sure what you mean by opioid+nsaid prescription painkillers, so I'll assume it's a mix of opiods plus NSAIDs. wouldn't make much sense to add aspirin/naproxen/ibuprofen on top of that, as they are also NSAIDs and that role's already been filled
paracetamol is also a fairly good painkiller so my guess is they're probably going for some synergy there as well
They probably mean stuff like Tylenol2, which is acetaminophen and codeine.
Couldn't they have given the liver to someone who was less of an idiot?
Ex alcoholic and “cirrhosis survivor” here. (I hate that latter term.)
I’m stunned that this situation went down how it did.
I had the full jaundice package when I finally went into the hospital and agreed to detox. I was told I would have to be booze-free for a minimum of six months to be considered for a transplant of any kind; both my liver and kidneys were in concerning shape.
They told me the timeframe for actually being considered was more like two years; there’s basically a board of trustees for each state, they review every case requesting an organ transplant and decide who gets what. (It’s literally a death panel, haha.)
No matter how good I was/am, I would still be at the very lowest priority. They’d have to have available livers as far as the eye can see for me to have a realistic chance. There is no actual chance I would ever get a donor liver, and I don’t want one.
I was dumb. I did it completely to myself. It’s not as simple as “you could’ve quit anytime you wanted,” trying to do that with alcohol is extraordinarily dangerous, BUT I did indeed do this to myself. It would be galactic levels of unethical and immoral for me to be trying to take a donor liver away from ANYONE.
I have since recovered way past the expectations of any medical personnel who worked on me during that time. July 1 will be two years alcohol-free for me.
My point in all of this is that I’m honestly having trouble believing this guy got this transplant at all, let alone so fast.
Organs don't keep... If they got the donor it probably meant there wasn't anybody else queued up.
Best friend's wife almost died like that. Was in a coma for 3-months until a transplant came through.
They should have just printed him a Darwin award on a piece of single ply toilet paper and sent him on his way.
Darwin award implies that he doesn't already have any children
That can be assured with a few post birth abortions.
ITT: People who don't know the difference between acute and chronic ODs and how a smaller amount over a long period can hurt you. 325mg APAP x4 will not kill you short term.
The problem was taking it every day over a long period.
Its still fucking stupid though.
I think the problem here is the word "packet" and what that means here exactly. Would be much more clear if they listed the amount of mg, or at the very least, how many pills are in a "packet"
I'm like 99% sure they took way more than just 4 Tylenol.
I've only ever seen "packets" contain two pills or capsules. 325x2x4= 2,600mg or 2.6g, well below the 8g average one time adult OD dose.
Taking less than 3g a day for <3 days is fine, although if you're needing that much you probably should see a medical professional about something more tailored to your type of pain.
Really though way too many people in general have the idea pain killers of any type should remove all pain and in many cases, that's not realistic without long term health complications.
Edit: lemmy did not like me using asterisks for multiplication.
Are you in the US too? Because I've only ever seen 2 pills in anything resembling a "packet" here as well.
However, other comments here seem to be implying that "packet" might have a different meaning in this context in Europe, with some suggesting it could be referring to an entire blister pack...
Just by the context in the OP itself, the implication is that this person took an absolute shit load of acetaminophen. Seemed to imply more than "just" 8 pills, which is still a lot but as you say, doesn't seem like enough for an acute OD.
So I'm wondering if they have packets with more than just 2 pills over there.
Yeah I'm p sure the daily maximum on the package is 4k
In the US, the FDA tried to limit how strong the individual capsules can be (325mg), but you can still buy it in 500mg strength. There are mandatory warnings on the label, but you can buy it in 500-tablet (at 325 or 500) bottles over the counter. It took almost 60 years before the FDA did anything, so a lot of people grew up thinking it was harmless.
Hah, im a psycho so i usually rawdog everything you would have to take painkillers for. Also i prefer not to get addicted to painkillers but thankfully that is pretty rare here in europe especially compared to the us.
Not treating pain can lead to chronic pain.
Wait what
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4664460/
😬
I mean if my doctor says that i have to take something i do but i usually ask if taking pain killers are necessary and its usually only for the pain. There are also painkillers that are anti-inflammatory and of course i take those.
Painkillers are no treatment
I’m mostly the same way.
Opioids make me physically ill and do not interact with my system well at all so I avoid them as much as I possibly can. I take it as a blessing that it puts me away from addiction risk, but it sucks when the rare Tylenol (acetaminophen/paracetamol) doesn’t cut it as my asthma makes NSAIDs a no-go.
Still, I’ll take swearing-pain over dizziness and breathing issues. Been tempted to take a knife to the problem areas myself though.
My daughter's dog that is a climber got on a shelf and knocked a basket off that had a large bottle of Tylenol in it. She chewed the bottle up.
I got home and saw some pills and a demolished bottle on the ground. Vet tech friend said to induce vomiting with hydrogen peroxide.
Didn't have any of that, but I did have some minty mouthwash with peroxide and no xylitol in it. Dog willingly drank it, puked with foam, drank a bit more, puked more foam, then I dug through the mess.
No pills or any sign of the color on the pills. She's still kicking.
how are you alive? H2O2 is like the basic necessity of every first aid kit. when you get a cut or scrape at home do you just like, ignore it?
do you even have bandaids or triple antibiotic ointment?
As far as I understand it, you shouldn't put peroxide on most, or maybe even any, wounds. It indiscriminately kills good and bad bacteria as well as your body's cells. So it can make the wound take much longer to heal.
Similar, but I think different, with iodine. You shouldn't use it in most cases.
The recommendation is to use warm soapy water to rinse/clean the wound really good. That's all.
If the wound is deep enough or gnarly enough that this doesn't seem reasonable? Well, peroxide wasn't gonna help you anyway, go to the doctor.
I'm happy to be wrong here, to be corrected. But this is how I understand it.
Also I do keep peroxide in my cupboard, as well as rubbing alcohol. Their uses just aren't for wounds.
Peroxide is actually a pretty terrible wound cleanser. Does as much damage to the healing tissue as to any bacteria, which is why you seldom see it used in the hospital. Honestly you are better off with lots of clean warm water and mild soap. If you really want to get wild, find some true antibacterial soap with chlorhexidine (hibiclens is the big brand name in the US) and wash the wound with that. Just don't use it on the face bc it's really bad for the eyes.
I guess.
I grew up on a farm. every cut, stab, or scrape was done on some rusty, shit caked, dirty metal thing or some sharp blade covered in blood. so peroxide was always used because the risk of some bacteria left behind for infection was greater than the risk of scar tissue.
my wounds heal pretty quickly, so it's not something I've had to deal with.
Just because we do something for a long time doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. In most cases, forceful irrigation with sterile saline is the best way to handle a dirty wound.
What a completely unnecessary comment
I see what you mean, but if mine was unnecessary, what does that make yours?
👍
holy fuck how did that guy make it to adulthood without braincells...
Pain is a hell of a drug, and if the first time you’ve had pain so bad you’d shoot yourself to make it stop is terrifying.
That, and tooth pain is particularly bad.
I had a wisdom tooth come in, smash itself against the molar next to it, and then start grinding the nerves together.
Literally blinding pain, like my vision went white and it overrode every other sensation in my body.
That being said, what ultimately helped me cope was a maximum does of ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Fair warning, I am not a doctor, and I was a young healthy man with no liver issues. I was able to take both at the same time and it cut the pain. The two meds work in different ways that compliment each other. This is not a long-term solution, this was to last 3 days for a dental appointment to have both teeth pulled.
but then you combine differently acting painkillers, not just take 20 times the safe dose of one O.o
like Ibuprofren and Paracetamol can be safely combined up to their allowed doses, which is what I did after surgery, spaced them out to half-time between each other's next allowed pill 🤷
It sounds like you've never experienced the pain I’m describing.
I had intense tummy aches for 15 days where I couldn't walk and needed to keep heat to my belly to even function, once my pain killers didn't work, I didn't push it, I just tried to handle the pain
I cried a lot in that time, it fucking sucked, but it sure was better than liver failure.
Well that is a permanent solution to some kinds of pain
That's why paracetamol should be sold in the pharmacy by a pharmacist who asks you for what you are using that stuff and warns you about side effects.
~~In a family of five, how often would I have to go to the pharmacy under that rule? Keep in mind that menstrual pain is a thing. Or would that just be the cheat code to get a dangerous dose?
How would the different online pharmacies know how often I told that story? Or does your proposal just mean "increased shipping cost"?
Don't think that's practical at all.~~
edit: Post I'm replying to wasn't talking about amounts at all. They are correct.
I don't know what that would change? You go to the pharmacy, say you have a family of five and menstrual pain? Nobody said anything about limiting the amount of drugs to buy.
Oh sorry maybe I misunderstood. Yes, paracetmol and other painkillers should only be sold in pharmacies. This is the case in Germany but you can buy essentially as much as you want if you tell them it's for multiple people.
Can you just buy them in a supermarket in the US?
edit: nvm, you're from DE as well. Again, sorry for misreading.
No worries!
i really don't want to live in a society where every move of a literate person is questioned because there's illiterate people roaming around.
There's clear dosage information in that leaflet inside every single paracetamol box. If you're emptying a box a day (let alone 4 boxes a day) and don't bother checking if that's safe then this is entirely on you
No? People should be allowed to decide that shit for themselves. It's not anyone's job to hold your fucking hand when you can just read the label.
As shown above, they don't read the label. Ironically, you didn't even read the screenshot that's the cause of all of this - which disproves your point entirely.
Yeah, problem is people cannot be relied upon to read the label. People are idiots. So it's a good suggestion to put a gatekeeper (pharmacist) in front of the dangerous stuff to walk people through the dangers verbally.
/thread
Yeah that's what US Americans call "freedom", but in other places that's not what it means. Where do you draw the line? Should people be allowed to buy opiods from the supermarket?
Yes, Tylenol #3 is otc in many countries
In all seriousness though providing drug users a route to buying drugs that were safely and reliably manufactured would both significantly lower harm and significantly limit the impact of cartels (see how they switched to controlling avocado trades as they are now losing the ultra lucrative marijuana market). Further, by not forcing users to go underground for their trade you could not connect them to resources for rehabilitation much more easily and earlier in the process of addiction
So yes you should unironically be able to buy safely manufactured heroin and cocaine and fentanyl in a store. Maybe not the grocery store, but a store
Seriously, read the insert. Indications, warnings, dosage, expiration date. Every single time.
... Is the expiration date that important ? I always thought the drug would just lose effectiveness but not really become dangerous
Yes, some drugs break down into other compounds that can be toxic after their expiration date.
then why to the others have it?
To prevent you from using medicine that's less effective. Doctors want your to have a certain concentration in your blood to be within the therapeutic window. If the concentration is too low you won't have the desired effect on you.
It's mostly out of caution, just as the date is shorter than it could be to be extra safe.
Let's say the maximum recommended dose is the "dangerous dose." That's 4 grams. 20x4=80 grams of paracetamol/acetaminophen. That's like 160 goddamn pills
The maximum recommended dose is generally much below the LD50 of a drug.
It also tends to be the maximum recommended dose for short term dosage for painkillers.
His issue was taking this for a long period.
https://nitter.net/onehappyfellow/status/1929498609373925519
https://x.com/onehappyfellow/status/1929498609373925519
I try and avoid painkillers whenever possible for two reasons:
Neither of these are true for acetaminophen/paracetamol though?
You can build a tolerance to both of those things, but their painkilling effectiveness is just not as strong as opiates.
Both of those are the same thing, and any chance of developing tolerance is very low.
Sorry, I was very tired - however, having taken ibuprofen for years - 2 pills will not give me the same pain relief as it did 10 years ago. I have to up it to 3, or 4. I'm not sure if this is tolerance or an increase in inflammation resulting in a need for a higher dose (hoping not).
Not that I would know, but don't all medications build up tolerance?
Like, I was under the impression that medicinal benefits are like a side-effect to what the body might otherwise consider a foreign pathogen. Does acetaminophen not trigger any immune response?
With some exceptions for medications that use the immune system to target therapy (such as monoclonal antibodies) or drugs that target the immune system specifically, there is no immune response to most medications.
You wont build a tolerance unless you're using it constantly. A few days for a pain a few times a year is meaningless for tolerance. As long as you RTFM, the hospital dose will always exceed your tolerance.
This doesn't apply to opioids but I'd argue people make too big a deal about those as well, just don't do them outside a prescription nor recreationally. You're probably more addicted to taking a shit every now and then unless your life is already in the drain.
Sounds like a messaging problem, despite the idiocy (or rather, because idiocy is the default). Like, I'm not silly enough to eat 4 boxes of paracetamol a day, but I've also read maybe 3 medication leaflets in my entire life, and I've been on literally dozens of antidepressants and antianxiety meds. I basically scan over the leaflet to see what sort of dick problems I can expect 😆
It's like the Terms of Service of an iTunes update. No cunt is reading that shit. People just know "i make click i get music", and "i swallow lump of chalk i feel better".
The leaflets aren't even written for laypeople to really understand them. Besides being in a 1pt font, they're written in something bordering on legalese but with medical terms. "Contraindications"?? The fuck am I, Beatrice Pharmacist the inventor of pharmacism? I don't blame people for getting 2 sentences in and giving up.
That said, the dosage is on the front of the box, and that should be enough for even the most imbecilic person. But if you lose the box and just have loose blister packs lying around for a year, you might go off the rails a little when the tooth pain kicks in.
It's also the case that something as "basic" as paracetamol being such a widespread and easy-to-buy medication causes a strange lack of respect for its potential danger. Like "pop a pill when you have a headache" is so second nature to us. It becomes a non-threatening intervention that only becomes less threatening the older you get, because it's just... there. So you don't even feel the need to check the leaflet for side effects and such, because it's 'part of the furniture' of our lives. This is the messaging problem I alluded to. You really gotta think about the dumbest person alive, and then aim for someone twice as dumb as that.
Just tell them you believe a billionaires earn their money, climate change is a hoax to sell books, and the solution to mass shootings is to sell more guns to more people.
You know, express the nonsensical opinions only a well deluded American is propagandized from birth to express with a straight face when they should be embarrassed at their belligerent ignorance.