Why would some think excessive Tylenol would be preferable over narcotic pain meds
How much Tylenol would a person have to consume over a two month period to permanently damage their liver
This is bizarre.
I think people often get confused because you can typically take a bunch of ibuprofen pills for pain and there are rarely serious side effects. But ibuprofen and tylenol are much different in this regard, despite the fact that both relieve pain and both can be easily bought in a drug store.
Huh? To actually think that taking 6 extra strength pills in 24 hours isn't enough margin of error? I mean maybe if the person is completely clueless and doesn't read the medicine instructions.
Honestly, if you're in that much pain that you're gobbling up 6-8 extra strength pills per day, every day, you should be in the hospital with an IV hooked up, or addressing the chronic pain issue that's causing it. Or have the doc prescribe you something way stronger.
On the other hand, UK has OTC ibuprofen+codeine which can fix essentially anything.
OTC painkillers are usually not meant for moderate+ pain, at least the stuff available in USA.
They're meant for taking you from 3/10 to 1/10. I know most people don't think about it in-depth, but surely we can expect at least some basic logic from them?
Like don't swallow pill #6 if the first 5 extra strength pills did nothing.
-take 2 caplets every 6 hours while symptoms last. -do not take more than 6 caplets in 24 hours, unless directed by a doctor.
It's not too crazy that someone in pain or feverish could think "maybe if I just take an extra pill or two I'll feel better and it will be totally safe..."
Liver damage can occur after a single incident. People have died from single time overdoses of paracetamol. There is a quick fix in an ER of giving NAC which can help eliminate most of the damage, but there is a small window(a day or two) where it is effective.
>Therefore, it may be beneficial to administer APAP(Tylenol) in combination with NAC routinely to reduce rates of liver failure and death. Because NAC's main role is to reduce the accumulation of APAP's toxic metabolites, the concomitant administration of NAC should have no impact on the efficacy of APAP as an antipyretic and analgesic.
Individual risk isn't exactly high, but OTC painkillers are ubiquitous.
Both accidents and suicide attempts are/were frequent. It's a rather terrible way to die, IIRC, with excruciating pain and entirely too much time to regret the decision/accident.
That pretty much leaves you with OTC pain meds - I know in these cases probably narcotics of the right kind in restricted doses sound much better but I am just truly afraid of side effects because of what we saw earlier in life.
Once I was lucky enough to get a steroid prescribed and it worked wonders compared to a dose of Ibuprofen every 4 to 6 hours.
As such, Tylenol overdose is more common. The labels are very clear about how much to take, but when you're in chronic pain, you may not be thinking much about the warning stickers or labels.
It must have been really quite painful. Still, I'd strongly recommend keeping drugs of all manner handy if you've got good self-control around them. They have high utility.
I don't blame him for the choices he made, having been there.
And the way pharmacies were handing out opioids it's quite possible. Wasn't called a crisis for nothing.
1: https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/over...
If true, it's interesting, and genuinely disturbing. I'd like to learn more about how something like that can happen at that scale.
If not true, it belongs on some other site where people don't care about what's true and not true.
I mean, I'd argue they're serial killers, but what they're doing is legal.
Protip: have some N acetyl cysteine handy. It's freely available on amazon, and it protects your liver from acetaminophen abuse (and helps rebound faster the next day after a night of heavy drinking, but the FDA absolutely hates when people mention that :-)
EDIT: replying here as HN things I'm "posting too fast"
Whenever in doubt, by default, you take it due to its extremely good tolerance.
There are no bad side effects at usual doses, even after 50+ years on the market (well, at very large doses, vomiting, which I think is good in case of acetaminophen or alcohol poisoning)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylcysteine
Don't let the FDA make it illegal:
https://www.sgtreport.com/2020/08/use-n-acetylcysteine-the-f...
https://fda.news/2020-08-21-fda-trying-make-n-acetylcysteine...