How was my New Year’s Eve Party, you ask? Fantastic, but now it’s back to the drugs:
I don’t get sick that often and when I do, the symptoms can differ from the previous snork fest so that every time I go to the medicine cabinet at the onset of a cold, any drugs I do find are expired. Also, living in two cities, doubles the likelihood of numerous expirations.
But this raises the question: do drugs really expire? And when they do expire, do they turn into poison, or do they just become less effective? Or is it all one big conspiracy from the pharmaceutical companies to get you to buy more drugs than is necessary? Like those jokers at the lube shop blowing hot air about how you HAVE to change your oil every 3 months or 3,000 miles. They’re lucky if they see me twice a year – greedy bastards.
Drugs have a long, long list of horrible side effects including death and 4+ hour erections. And that’s when they are taken within the designated date range. But what happens when you take an out-of-date pseudoephedrine tablet?
At 2am the other night, it felt like my throat would crack from the dryness if I wasn’t allowed to fall asleep with my mouth closed. I rolled out of bed in search of relief and found some Actifed decongestant pills that had been stored for God knows how long in my desk back at the office and were still in the packing box when I was laid off in November.
When you buy drugs it seems like the expiration date is YEARS away. But the very next time you get sick and grab it again, it’s expired. And this Actifed didn’t disappoint. The expiration date (or expiry date, for some of you non-US readers) was August 2008.
August 2008? That’s like coming up to a traffic light when it’s yellow and almost red. Do you take your chances and gun it? Or do you stop and wait the longest possible time for the next red and be miserable until it’s your turn again?
Actually, that was a crappy anology. Forget I said that. I’ll save it for another, more appropriate time.
Anyway, I wasn’t about to go looking for a 24-hour drugstore just to avoid Mouth Breather of the Year. Not when I could risk my life taking this barely expired little white pill.
So I pressed that little pill through its packaging, laid back with my Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast and waited. The next thing I knew, I was breathing through my nose again and falling fast asleep. Ahhhhhhh.
But I didn’t do this just for me. I did it for you, my dear readers, and pretty much all of mankind, really. I’m keeping you all safe from the possibility of keeling over from any long-in-the-tooth cold remedies.
It’s a service I provide with pride. And phlegm. So now because of Nanny Goats in Panties, you can look forward to your next cold feeling safe in the knowledge that your congealed cough syrup is just fine. Spit out the chunks if you must, but the rest of it is perfectly harmless.
And in these tough economic times, isn’t it a good thing to know that you don’t have to throw your money down the drain for so-called “fresh” medicine, when stale, out-dated drugs work just as well, if not better? I mean, wasn’t penicillin discovered from a moldy petri dish or something?
