Many of you reading this have attended these big game conventions. You know they're places where the hale and hearty become sick, not where the sickly go to get well. When I woke up last Monday, I knew I was sick, and it was too late to stop it. I figured I'd take last Tuesday off (which I did) and use the day to get well in anticipation of the trip. Not so much with the working.
But I did learn another annoying way in which the Patriot Act is making the life of the average American just a bit more hassled, for little measureable effect.
The last time I was this sick with this kind of head cold was some time maybe in early 2005. At the time, a friend told me about the wonderous powers of Advil Cold & Sinus. One pill, 12 hours of ass-kicking relief and clear-headedness. I went out and bought a box of 10 pills, and it only took about two to see me through to total health. This stuff is amazing.I was still working off the leftovers of that box of 10 last Tuesday, on my sick day off, but they just weren't doing the job. Then I noticed the expiration date on the package -- sometime in the middle of 2005. I was a little nervous that I'd downed two or three pills of a year-expired medication, but I figured if anything was going to happen to me, it already would have. But at least now I had a pretty good idea of why it wasn't working. Of course, by this point, it was too late on Tuesday to go out and get fresh medicine, so I resolved to pick some up on the way into work the next morning.
I hit the grocery store on the drive in, sometime around 8:40 AM in the morning. I know exactly what I'm looking for, heading straight to the medicine aisle. I stand there, double and triple checking the shelves for two minutes. No sign of the good stuff. What the hell? Did they stop making it?
Then I see the little papers sticking on the rack: "Bring this to the pharmacy counter to purchase this product." Advil Cold & Sinus is one of about six products not actually out on the shelf. And the pharmacy isn't open yet, that early in the morning. I was too addled and mucus-brained to understand why the medicine I bought off the shelf about 18 months earlier was now locked behind a stupid gate, but there was nothing I could do about it. So I bought some Sudafed instead.
Worthless crap. Did nothing for me. So why was the Advil the good stuff?
Pseudophedrine.
I don't know exactly what is so wonderful about it, but that is the good stuff. And apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so, because as I learned last week, it's apparently useful in making bathtub meth, or something like that. I guess people were buying it by the crates, and chemistrying up themselves a great old time.
Hence why the federal government, in their amendments of the Patriot Act in mid-2005, decided they needed to make it more of a pain in the ass for law-abiding citizens like me who actually need the stuff to actually get it when we want it.
Which is why I still wasn't healthy by the time I left on my trip Thursday.
Which is why I remained sick for the entire duration of the trip.
And you know who else could have used some psuedophedrine? The guy in the hotel room next to mine on Saturday night. Let me tell you, the walls at the Anaheim Hilton are paper thin. And how shall I put this...?
Have you ever seen Poltergeist II? You know when Craig T. Nelson swallows the demonic tequila worm that possesses him, and then later he gags and vomits up this foot-long evil sandworm-baby looking thing? Well, it sounded like four or five of those things were trying to escape from this guy. It was vile. It woke me up every hour for the entire night.So, in summation, I think I'm saying this: I don't believe my having the flu makes this country safer from terrorism, nor is it helping us win the "war on drugs." Same goes for the guy in room 5-250.
All this fuss over psuedophedrine. Imagine how good the phedrine must be!
4 comments:
What you left out was that you can buy one packet per day only, and only three per month.
For people without kids, you might think that sounds like plenty. But when the kid is sick, so are you. If you need a day and a night version, and so does the kid, you can only buy three out of those four in one month, and it will take you three days to accumulate the medicine you need.
Bitches.
I can't imagine our federal government would rather put an annoying bandaid on a problem rather than fix it.
Damn, Evan. I'd have asked to be moved to a different room after the first wake-up. That guy's not going to stop hacking, but you can always go someplace else.
Otherwise, I've been there with the cold meds. The only thing that has ever worked on me is Claritin, even when it's not allergies.
Aren't there ways around this rule? Why can't I buy three at one Walgreens, then another three at CVS, then another three at Jewel?
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