@ my followers with chronic pain
If you can at all help it, please do NOT take more than the recommended dose of over-the-counter ((OTC)) painkillers. I know that OTC painkillers are not particularly harmful nor addictive, though the a persistent and high dose can be harmful in the long run. Your stomach, liver, and kidneys can be seriously damaged by long-term use of painkillers, even at the recommended dose if it’s too often that you take it. Also, while I said that OTC painkillers aren’t addictive ((which is technically true)), they can create a dependency that will lead to much more severe pain unless the recipient keeps taking more frequent and stronger doses.
It’s a catch-22, really, and sometimes there is no other feasible option. I want to warn you all, though, in case you haven’t gotten to this point yet. I’ve been taking OTC painkillers daily for years now, and it’s at the point where I can’t go to class or leave the house without taking it. The dependency my body has developed causes me to have headaches even worse than the migraines I take painkillers to control in the first place. It’s a shitty position to be in, because I need to keep taking them to be able to function, but the more I take them, the less healthy it is to take them, and so on in the cycle.
TL;DR Please take OTC painkillers seriously. They are not a highly-controlled substance or prescription drug, but like all chemicals and drugs they do come with their effects that you should be aware of.
I was taking painkillers daily for a couple weeks and I didn’t realize the side effects it can have on your liver and kidneys. I already have a chronic illness, I really don’t need to deal with that too.
I feel like the pills only really helped in the way of placebo anyways, but I was still afraid of what would happen if I stopped. I actually felt better when I stopped taking them and I realized they never really helped in the first place.
That’s true- they genuinely don’t work for some people. A friend of mine would take Excedrin for migraines, though she doesn’t react well to man-made medicines, so it really didn’t do anything. For myself, it does make a marked difference to a degree, though I know that if I’d never started taking them like this then my migraines wouldn’t be as bad as they’ve become in the first place.
This raises a great point: Genuinely evaluate how you feel when you take an OTC painkiller because some types or just OTC painkillers in general may not affect you in a significant way. Personally, Tylenol doesn’t do shit for me, but Excedrin does, etc. If one works for you, please try to use it sparingly.
