Who knew?

[pecunium]

I have had a cough since the flight back from London. I got a small cold in Scotland, and the effect of 14,000 miles of travel with the attendant dry air of airplanes, and the weather changes left me with a cough.

A persistent, non-productive cough.

Today, as I got to the exercise I was hacking a blue streak. Not to the point of physical exhaustion and collapse, but that sort of wracking, painful cough. The sort that comes in fits, not the one or two which had been the pattern for the past week.

Without much hope of relief, I went to see the docs.

They, wonder of wonders, had something. Not only did they have something (and not mere lozenges; what, by the way, is the practical effect of a cough drop? I don’t swallow them down my lungs, they go to my stomach), it really works.

Happily it’s not codeine. I hate codeine. I had to take it once for a really bad cough (I was coughing myself to the floor. Oxygen starvation was the only pause. When I was unable to power the diaphragm, it would pause, just long to get a breath and start over again. After a few minutes I gave up rising back to my knees and just lay on the carpet). The prescription was for two-weeks, after three days I was done.

Not only did it taste nasty (one of the most vile and bitter things I have ever had. It smelled of orange blossoms and tasted like ever bit of bitter lemon peel and used motor oil ever pulled from the bottom of a Sunkist harvest truck), but the effect my senses (as though I were playing out of time, and to a retarded beat from the rest of the world) made me wonder why; not to mention how, anyone used it as a recreational substance.

No, they prescribed Benadryl. Lo and behold it works. 50mg and my urge to cough was gone. On the negative side I am loggy. It’s not the cotton batting and out of synch of codeine, but rather a lassitude. I am half asleep when I stop being active. The mind is alert behind the eyelids, and I am in a near immediate state of reverie when I close them, but I am aware.

I am not at my best, but I neither is trying to interact with others a fruitless venture.

Forget the cough syrups, the lozenges and the salt-water gargles… a little pink pill and I am coming up roses.

Comments

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I've been taking Benadryl (25 to 50 mgs) a a PRN sleep aid. There's another guy here to seems to be on the liquid form and ('tho I have nothing to base this on) it seems he's on it to calm down.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

The nasty stuff sounds a lot like Terpin Hydrate, which I took for a similarly bad cough when I was a child.

[ourika.livejournal.com]

Benadryl's never helped my coughs. I have a love/hate relationship with codeine that I might be reacquainting myself with soon. Back when I lived in NJ, I got bronchitis at least once a year, and by the time I was 27, I was regularly getting pneumonia. The only thing that worked was codeine cough syrup. I hated the way it made me feel, but it made my cough stop, so I loved it. Here in AZ, I've had it once as part of a tylenol pain killer since it was the only thing that wouldn't react with my other meds. That was horrible - no help as a pain killer, but a complete inability to function as a human. I won't ever allow it again for anything but a cough!

I can't figure out why anyone would want to take it as a recreation drug. Maybe if someone's not in pain and not hacking up a lung, it gives some sort of pleasurable sensation?

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Perhaps some people merely find inability to function to be a pleasure?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I can appreciate that. There are times when the waters of Nepenthe seem a good idea, but there are ways to do that which don't have such an unpleasant mechnism.

Honestly, I'd rather have a hangover than taste codeine.

TK

[ourika.livejournal.com]

Perhaps that is the case.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

I am loving me my codeine. Actually cocodamol, 8mg codeine/500mg paracetemol, x2, up to 4 times per day. Effervescent, so I get the full taste of both lovely drugs in half a pint of fizzing liquid. Yum yum. Happy Fun Cocodamol for the win.

It beats the living hell out of trying to live with the pain I take it for, usually either migraine or M.E. pain or both. It's a non-scrip painkiller of both first and last resort - it's the only one I can take that works, but I don't take it unless the pain is or is going to make me unable to otherwise function.

It's also pleasurable - soft, soothing, pleasant, a warm, floaty don't-care dreamy feeling. It gives very pleasant dreams and a comfortable drowsiness. I quite like it, but still avoid taking the stuff unless I have to. Frex, it's healthier to take the addictive stuff at the start of a migraine than to spend six hours headbutting a wall while crazed with pain and unable to drink water because of throwing up. I'll even take it when the pain is bearable when awake, but will stop me getting any quality sleep.

I can see easily where, if life is unpleasant, having physical pain numbed and a pleasant floaty dreamy feeling would be a preferable way to pass the time. Narcotic addiction is very understandable to me, I just don't want to ever have to tackle it from a first-hand point of view.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's not that I don't appreciate drugs. Fentynol is wonderful; much better than morphine (which they gave me in lieu of a third hit of the fentynol, for my kidney stone. I was expecting great things, and got a surcease from caring, much, about the pain, but the pain was still there), and I can see getting to like it.

But codeine just leaves me feeling confused, lost and slow of mind.

TK

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

I got that with morphine. Three days on it before and after surgery and I ended up so bored with not being able to read or concentrate that I stopped taking it and just put up with the pain so I could read to amuse myself.

Normal cocodamol does nothing much for me but dull the pain, eventually, while leaving me sick. The Happy Fun (fizzy) Cocodamol actually feels good.

The last two days, I have stuck to wine, then, after a good break, tomorrow I'll be back on codeine again.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Cough drops anesthetize and/or coat the throat, reducing some of the irritation that may trigger the cough reflex.

At least I think that's how they work.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That's the theory, I just wonder that the tube for ingestion being soothed relieves irritation in the tube for breathing.

TK

I love benedryl

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

well, generic. We buy it in 500 count bottles in my house because we all have summer allergies.

If it's making you stop coughing, it's an allergy you're reacting to and so the little pink pill is a good thing. You will likely get used to it after a bit and not feel so logy.

For me (ms "if there is an adverse/sleepy side effect to the pill it will happen), when I take benedryl for my alergies, and right now I'm on an approx. every 8 hour time frame, it does not make me sleepy. If the stuffyness/itchiness isn't allergys, it WILL make me sleepy.

Yay you. Coughing is not a pleasant thing.

(found my way here from Making Light, I enjoy your posts! keep up the good work. --Paula Helm Murray.)

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Only cough syrup that does anything for me a honey and anise one, and that's mostly because the anise vapor from it opens the passages more.