Day 111 - I Wanna Be Sedated

Only Take Medication When Necessary

I'b sick. I hab a head code. By doze is stuffy, by ears are plugged, by eyes are puffy and I can't breade. I deed drugs.

But as my fellow blogger at It Must Be The Vapors once posted, "You are what you don't shit". Which is a great reminder to all of us that what goes in our bodies eventually comes back out and gets flushed down the crapper. And none of us is so disconnected as to think that it just magically disappears after that. No sirree. It is then "treated" with a myriad of chemicals to ensure proper pH levels and such and then released back into our waters, lakes and oceans.

So, in an effort to save not only my liver, but also the planet, I will be refraining from my standard, self-medicating modus operandi. That is to say, I will not be popping pills left and right in an effort to unstuff, unplug and anesthetize myself into a euphoric stupor until every symptom has passed.

Instead, I will spend the days eating chicken soup with cumin and cayenne and drinking hot mulled cider. At night, when I desperately need my sleep, I will take a decongestant, but will make sure I don't take any of those multi-indication concoctions to treat symptoms I do not have.

Spare the Nyquil, save the world.


Savings:

During the course of the winter, I'll get sick probably five times (I have two snot-nosed toddlers -- be amazed that I'm not perpetually ill).

Each cold would normally have me popping two multi-symptom pills every six hours and a cold generally lasts about a week. So, that's 56 pills I would normally take, each containing a minimum of three separate active ingredients, for a total of 168 individual ingredient doses. Instead, I'll be taking a maximum of 14 decongestant-only pills, plus about 20 Tylenol.

So, to extrapolate a bit further, during the course of my five illnesses, I'll be saving 670 individual chemical doses. Wow. That stuff really adds up!


Difficulty Level: 3 out of 5

Impossible? No. Pleasant? Not exactly. But you know, sometimes getting sick is a sign from your body that you need to slow down and take it easy. Rather than drugging up and trying to plow through my days as I normally would, I'll focus on getting well and just let the laundry pile up.