Antihistamine hell
Mar 31st, 2008 by spaceagesage
Last Saturday night I made the mistake of taking “the green pill.”
Spring hay fever brings a bit of hell on earth for me. Either the faucet is turned on in my nose and my sneezes number in the hundreds by days end, or I take an antihistamine and it makes me irritable and depressed. It’s a case of damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
Saturday, among all the decongestants and antihistamines in our medicine cabinet, was a green one. Drixoral.
I should have known better, but I had had enough of an all-afternoon bout of sneezing, nose blowing, and eye itchiness. The other over-the-counter medications have not been so effective this year, so I thought I’d try Drixoral.
As I am writing this, I hopped over to their website and found this about one of the ingredients:
“Pseudoephedrine may cause nervousness, restlessness or insomnia … Other known possible adverse effects … include anxiety, tension, restlessness, nervousness, tremor, weakness, insomnia, headache, palpitation, tachycardia, angina, elevated blood pressure, sweating, mydriasis, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, constipation and dysuria due to vesicle sphincter spasm.”
Gosh, and I thought hay fever was bad.
Sure, I had hardly a minute of hay fever symptoms, but my mind turned to mush, my motivation took a hard dive –all the way back to bed for two naps — and I felt as if everything I valued in life was now pretty meaningless. The green pill pulled my emotions down into hopelessness.
I had to keep telling myself, “This is just the medication,” all day long. Thankfully my husband understood, ignoring my green pill reactions and still loving me for who and what I am.
Well, it’s a new day, and I am swearing off the green pills forever. I don’t want to visit antihistamine hell again.
Ah, the green pill. I know all about those, although mine is white and is called vicodin. Nasty little things. I only take them when I have had enough of the pain and can no longer function. Within 30 minutes my nose starts to itch and I begin the narcotic scratching that can make my nose raw. 30 minutes after that I no longer hurt, but I can’t for the life of me remember what I was doing three seconds earlier. 45 minutes after taking the stupid thing I move to the couch, where I lay my head down. My head must weight a hundred pounds it takes so much effort to lift it. My husband finally notices that I am drooling and takes me upstairs and tucks me in to bed, where I fall into a drug induced dream whirlwind of craziness. Lucky for me I can make the Advil work most of the time.