I have had allergies for about 16 years now. There are some great medicines OTC now, but when I was in high school, pseudoephedrine and Benadryl was pretty much all there was. Both of these can be deadly when drinking, so they kept me off the sauce through high school. However, I bought about a pack a week of pseudoephedrine which made my face not run uncotrollably, made day to day living bearable, and allowed me to spend a little time at houses with animals without falling asleep. Benadryl would allow me to do all these things, but usually it would also result in me falling asleep on the closest couch.
Now though there are great non-drowsy antihistamines, and, as such I have not bought pseudoephedrine in years. Due to not being able to take antihistamines though for the next couple of days (at the request of my allergist), I ran to the pseudoephedrine. And buying it was like I was trying to get a gun or something. I was looked at shadily, asked for ID, and I had to give my address. While I understand meth is bad and all, this is a pretty ridiculous procedure for buying ONE pack of pseudoephedrine.
And it made me realize that the OTC allergy meds that kept me a non-drinker in high school would now be ILLEGAL for me to buy underage. What a pain that would have been, to not be able to buy allergy medicine when my parents weren’t around. I honestly would have had to get older kids to buy it for me, or suffer in snotty misery. Funny that by making a useful, non-recreational drug illegal for underage kids, you could drive them to illegal recreational drugs. Go war on drugs, go!
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