Pills?

[Slugawoo]

I take Ibuprofen when I have an awful headache. And that's almost never(only after I drink 6 liters of Mountain Dew in 3 days, then don't drink anything with caffine in it). So maybe... once or twice a year.

Other than that, I don't take pills because I don't want to. My mother said I should be taking vitamins, but I wont. I'll be damned before someone shoves one of those HUGE horse pills down my throat.

I don't trust scientists or doctors, so medicine in general creeps the hell out of me. I also wont take pills because they test the damn stuff on animals. I think it's safe to say I have a phobia of anything that has to do with the medical profession.

I could be in horrible pain and refuse medication. I wont be surprised when I die only 20 years old. xP

[Kantark]

...can anyone recommend anything good for mouth ulcers?

Occasionally I get them, and Bonjela hasn't let me down yet

[oogabooga]

I don't know if "routinely" really describes it, but I do take ibuprofen for headaches once in a while, and Sudafed when I have a cold (which is rare, thankfully) and sometimes vitamin C if I feel like I'm risking getting sick, like when everyone around me has a cold or if I've been stressing out my immune system by not getting enough sleep or whatever. (I don't know whether it helps or not, but I didn't get sick when almost everybody else did, so...) And while I was in Atlanta, I started getting allergies in spring and fall and took medication for that because my eyes were so itchy I couldn't function. Normally I'd have just ignored it.

[tehcutiepie]

Just vitamin C + zinc for 30 days twice a year, in the autumn and spring :0 It's just for general immune strengthening since that's the time of year when we all wilt into disease. And I don't eat seafood so my zinc levels are close to non-existant.
Taken Ibumetin only a few times in my life, when I thought I was gonna die. Otherwise, I try my best to be brave

[Trick]

And Ibuprofen = boys best friend!

Hee ^^

And I'd imagine the reason so many are on the pill is that, as shown in replies here, people take it for lots of different reasons.

[Cheese]

I know that, it just purprises me that so many people use it for whatever reason.

Also co-codamol = MAN's best friend.

[Wingsrising]

I can't be bothered to remember to take vitamins if that's the only thing I need to take, but at the moment I'm taking antidepressants daily, so I may as well throw vitamins in, too. At the moment it's cranberry extract (vitamin C + hopefully happy urinary tract), flax seed oil (Omega 3 fatty acids), calcium (hopefully will still be able to stand up straight as I age) and a generic One-A-Day Essentials pill. I like One-A-Day Essentials because it's small (the size of an asprin) and doesn't have iron or calcium in it.

If I'm having allergy problems I take Allegra during the day and Benedryl at night. If I can't sleep I take Ambien or melatonin. I also have a variety of OTC medication for various digestive concerns, real Sudafed (the kind they keep behind the counter now) if my nose gets stuffy, acetominephin for aches, and ibuprofen for cramps.

As you can probably see, I'm a great believer in better living through chemestry. I figure, if there's a pill that can help and the side effects seem reasonable, why suffer?

[Huggles]

I cannot swallow pills. Chewing them up, crushing them and mixing them with something, or even letting them dissolve in my mouth is fine. But I can't and have never been able to swallow them. Because of that and my general fear of medication, I've never taken anything for menstrual cramps except for one time a few years ago where I took some advil before I blacked out from the pain. I vaguely remember waking up in the emergency room, but they never found anything to indicate why it happened and it's never happened since.

I recently started taking medication for over active bladder. That means I felt like I had to pee constantly, even though I actually didn't need too. I thought it might be a symptom of diabetes since my father was diagnosed with a couple months ago and there's a huge history of it within my family. I'm not sure how long I waited to go see my doctor because it was a gradual onset, but it was anywhere between 3-6 months. I was tested twice—I'm also needle phobic and hate having blood drawn—and don't have it. They looked for random other things, and I'm not anemic or infected or anything else. I also don't have any allergies. Yay.

So, I end up getting my prescription filled without first telling him about the no swallowing pills thing. I checked online and they turned out to be the kind of capsules that you aren't supposed to open or let dissolve in your mouth. After breaking and choking on about 20 pills, I finally called and had my prescription changed to liquid medication. Huzzah! I stopped taking it after I started my period because the two combined messed up the signals to my brain and I'd not be able to go at all for a day, then have to go constantly the next. It's been about a week since I've been done wih both and I think I'm back to normal. It's still kinda hard to tell after months of my body confusing my brain.

I'm also still waffling about just exactly how and when to bring up the whole years of depression(maybe bipolar?), insomnia, and chronic fatigue thing with my doctor since I literally only saw him for about 3 minutes during that entire ordeal. Right now I feel the best I've felt in the past 10 years, but that's hardly saying much and I think I'm at the point where I can't do much more for myself without professional help. I've seen what my brother had to go through for at least a year before they found the right combination of drugs to treat him—seizures, muscle spasms and shaking, memory loss, partial paralysis, severe disorientation, nausea and vomiting—and needless to say I don't take the decision lightly. I still don't know what his exactly diagnosis is, I'm leaning towards schizophrenia after going through all his medications, because my family finds the subject taboo to the point of ludicrousness and it's not something I was allowed to ask about as a teenager.

/End unexpectedly long and rambling post

[Silverevilchao]

I take a low dose birth control pill every night to regulate my period...before I was prescribed to those, my menstral cycle was completely out of whack.

I was prescribed an albuterol inhaler for my horrible bronchitus two years ago, and I still have it in case I get an asthma attack on the way to school when I bike in 40 degrees F weather in the mornings. I got asthma attacks a lot last year, but I'm not having any problems this year.

If I have a rare bout of stress-induced insomnia, I'd take a sleep aid, because, unlike all of the teenagers I know, I need more than 5 hours of sleep to function. Hell, I can barely function on 8!


...seriously, though, I NEVER take vitamins. I barely have enough time to finish a bowl of cereal in the mornings, what makes my mom think I can take another 45 seconds and swallow three giant pills that I can choke on? Not to mention, they taste bad, too - BLECH!

[Aurinona]

Married, don't want kids yet- yeah, I'm on contraceptives. Anyway, weird hormone problems run in my family, and my ovaries seem to be much happier now. Hooray!

Other than that, I have calcium chews (when I remember to take them), ibuprofen for headaches, and claritin for the occasional bout of allergies.

Mostly I just keep trying to shove the Claritin down James's throat, because he has perpetual allergies and never thinks to take anything for them. =P Meanwhile, James keeps trying to convince me to take some of the great big multivitamins in the cabinet, thinking that they're the solution to everything. Neither of us have gotten very far in that battle.

[Kari]

I've was on various antibiotics and stuff for acne for 6 or 7 years, until I started taking accutane (that baby killing pill), which actually works. Almost done with taking it, so I won't be taking pills regularly for once.

Unless my back pain keeps up and I'm still cramming down assorted over the counter pain pills. Also take assorted sinus/allergy pills in the spring, fall, and whenever I get a cold.

[Joey]

No pills, I don't want to. I'm personally against the mentality that if something is wrong you throw a pill at it and everything is all better. And by that I mean that I don't care how many pills someone else takes, as that's your body, I just won't take them myself.

It also doesn't help that anything I take hits me like a sack of bricks.

[Mac]

I take a whole lot of aspirin and ibuprofen (or however you spell it). Probably at least 3 times a week, I get bad headaches. Which probably isn't the most healthy thing in the world, but it works =p

Um... I've taken benadryl a few times, twice on planes (didn't help, they still scared me) and once during a panic attack type thing. =/ It helped during the panic attack, though.

[FaerieInGrey]

On aspirin and ibuprofen and all other kinds of mild pain-killing things, I never, ever take them. I don't like them. I also never take any kind of cold or cough medicine.

I'd prefer to take nothing at all, really, but ... eh. You win some, you lose some. They're never shoving another lithium down my throat, though, and that's for sure.

[Jessi]

Hm.

I'm usually on birth control, so Lindsey doesn't get me pregnant. JOKING. But because I have such bad cramps and a very off-cycle period (cause you all wanted to know that.) Right now I'm not since I'm behind on my exams. I need to get back in touch with an OBGYN.

I also usually take anti-depressants (for.. um, depression! I don't have an interesting reason for it, I have depression, it's pretty straight forward e_e) every day, but once again, doctor. I didn't have insurance for a while so it was hard to afford doctors and drugs, but I'm getting back into routine.

I also, in the late summer/early fall, take allergy pills, but not necessarily every day, just whenever I feel like crap - usually a few times a week.

I also take calcium pills every day in the winter. I don't drink milk (I don't like the taste ;_;), so that helps.

And I think that's it.