Full blown Kermit freakout in that last panel!
I used to take my cat to an old country horse vet. On one visit she had to get a pill of some sort and I told the vet that my cat hated pills and it wouldn’t be possible to get one down her throat. He said “son, I’ve been a vet for over 50 years and I’ve never had a cat that I couldn’t pill.” He couldn’t get the pill down her throat and had to give her a shot instead. I’ve never been so proud. RIP Martha, miss you girl.
Sometimes vets never listen, even though you told them exactly how your pet will behave.
… Do y’all really have that much of a problem popping pills?
It took me until my 20s before I could swallow pills without gagging and spitting out water.
Then one day something just clicked and since then, no problem.
I can do one, two or even eight at a time like it’s nothing.You deepthroated for the first time didn’t you
I can take pills but not a toothbrush.
Same lol. Every morning my gf laughs at me cause I’m in there insert gagging sounds sounding like I’m in a cheap amateur porno lmao.
Gotta get the tongue clean though! Feel like that’s where all the breath stinks is! Lol
They make actual scrapers for that.
True! I just use the tongue scrubber on my toothbrush haha
You can just train away your gag reflex.
I can suck cock but have to push pills down with my fingers
You just like gagging yourself dl
When I got married and had a kid, I discovered “trouble swalling pills” is indeed a phenomenon.
I have been taking pills since I was five thanks to my temperature-based allergy. I just salivate when I see a pill. It’s quite inconvenient when I am handling my child or spouse’s medicine.
I mean yeah, I also had an aversion to swallowing pills when I hadn’t done it before. But I got used to it pretty quickly, using this method specifically. I just assumed everybody did it like this
I couldn’t swallow pills until after my SECOND child. Just stuck to liquids when available.
Yeah I’ve had daily meds since I was 6. I was confused when I first met people who couldn’t take pills
The only temperature-based allergy I know of is cold urticaria and I’m unaware of medication for it, but word love to know if that’s not the case.
Yup, and it’s just regular antihistamines. I took seldane for a while until they took that off the market, then it was on to reactine. It was a bit of a slap in the face when the reactine became non-prescription, and therefore somehow not medically necessary according to my insurance provider.
As a kid? Yes. I have a very strong gag reflex. The doctor using a tongue depressor would make me retch. I had trouble swallowing meat if it was tough or fatty. I would have to chew it for a very long time before I could swallow it. Fatty bacon I usually just had to give up and spit out.
It took me until I was a teenager until I could swallow a pill. I practiced on swallowing blueberries.
Now I have no problems, I can swallow a handful of pills and I’m a vegetarian.
I’ve always had a very sensitive gag reflex, to the point it’s difficult to clean my tongue while brushing.
Never in my life had issues swallowing pills. Absolutely no idea how I got one without the other
Same. I gag brushing my tongue every time. I’ve actually vomited a bit a few times which totally ruins the point of brushing the teeth. No problem with pills.
That’s crazy. I can swallow tons of pills in one go but the idea of swallowing a blueberry whole sounds tough.
This thread has me questioning my propensity for empathy. I never for a minute imagined, outside of folks with medical issues, that it was a problem. This has me interested. If I were a scientist and not just some guy, I’d study it.
As a kid, I had difficulty, as kids tend to. One day, as others have mentioned, it clicked, and sometimes I have several pills in there at once; e.g., Mucinex 12h, two Sudafed, two ibuprofen is a common combination on the rare occasion I’m sick.
As a kid, I recall practicing on Kraft Deluxe Mac n cheese, swallowing without chewing, and I think, from there, it just kind of developed. So load up on Kraft Deluxe, folks, cheese up that esophagus.
Every day I’m amazed by the most mundane shit that Lemmings somehow struggle with
It’s surprisingly common considering how ubiquitous pills are, not just for the oddballs here
I certainly don’t. I can easily put five or ever more pills in my mouth at the same time and swallow them all with one sip of water. I’m not even sure how I do that. They just all kinda align and slide down.
Some people do it voluntarily.
Why fly a kite when you can just pop a pill?
I’m more confused about how rolling a kid up in a blanket would improve the situation of them not being able to swallow a pill. I can understand how getting them to take something chewable or a liquid that tastes like shit would be difficult but swallowing a pill? You literally just put it in your mouth and swallow a drink of water, you can’t even tell it’s there really… I was ecstatic when I got old enough for them to stop giving me chewable medicine. I still can’t eat applesauce because of my grandma mixing some antibiotic I had to take with it when I was 7.
No. Mouth full of drink as if going to gargle. Tilt head back, open mouth, drop in pill(s), IMMEDIATELY swallow, AND chase with more drink.
Dear god, its like some people want to taste our crimes against nature.
Tilting your head down can actually help with swallowing by a lot.
Insert pill. Put liquid in mouth. Tilt chin down. Swallow.
Source: have dysphagia, can only swallow pills and other hard substances by tilting head down
It varies a lot from person to person. The only way I was able to learn to swallow pills at first was to deliberately swallow air, like you do if you want to make yourself burp. Head forward? Head back? Both interfered.
some pills have nasty taste if they touch your gums or mouth. fill in water first, then pill, then swallow.
Guess that just didn’t bother me, but yeah, which you do first didn’t make a difference in terms of swallowing. It’s all about tilting the chin down to open the throat.
At least close your mouth first, unless you like spilling drink+pills everywhere.
Pretty sure tilting the head down is implied in my personal swallowing process. I’m not sure I can actually swallow anything with my chin up.
Tilt head back, open mouth, drop in pill(s), IMMEDIATELY swallow
Definitely not implied. I thought your entire point was keeping the head tilted back.
Good for you. Only reason to tilt the head back is to not spill. Closing the mouth fixes that. This is “pill taking recommendations”, not “re-thinking swallowing-in-general 101”
They’re talking about a way to prevent aspiration with dysphagia by tilting the chin down to the chest.
I’ve been taking 6+ pills a day for years and still can’t get myself to swallow them. I just chew everything. Tasty painkillers and caffeine.
BTDT. Time-release is too useful though.
My only time-release capsule is filled with little beads, I just pop it open and eat the beads like pop rocks
O_O
(゜o゜;
I am intensely displeased with this comment. I don’t know why this got to me so much more than the other degenerate shit I’ve seen around, but this gave me a pretty violent physical reaction. Maybe it’s because I’ve been taking time release capsule meds for 15ish years now? Whatever the cause, you should be proud because that was well written.
I’m speaking my truth. XR Adderall, crack em open and pour em on me tongue. The caviar of stimulants
And these goddamn pharma companies putting binders and shit in so you can’t medically boof em.
Someone already said it, but tilting your chin down opens your throat, while tilting your head back will constrict
Tucking your chin down while swallowing pills is best
Also many pills (especially capsules, where the coating and filling are separate vs tablets that are compressed as one) float, so counterintuitively, tilting your head forward actually brings the capsule up to the back of your throat!
… and I already replied to them. Enjoy spilling drink and pills everywhere.
The only pill you need to swallow is the truth
Sure. Fuck sincerity, fuck honest advice. This guy didn’t specify exactly how one should swallow, so he’s a lying liar! You got me!
What exactly are you imagining?
They are trying to be funny by playing on the fact that the person they are replying to didn’t include closing their mouth in the list of steps.
thank you
People that are capable of realizing I didn’t narrate the entire process of swallowing. IDK, if you’re imagining I would even put into words specific movements of the tongue, lips, jaw, etc, you’re opinion of my instructional skills is way off.
This…works less well with kids.
damn, you beat me to it. can confirm, it works like a charm
LPT: Fill your mouth with water, hold your head back and open mouth. drop the pill in. close mouth and swallow the water.
you wont even feel the pill.
by throwing the pill into the water already in your mouth instead of putting itin your mouth and then drinking the water, the pill wont have a chance to stick to your tongue or gums and release its bitter/nasty taste.
Yeah! This is it. The amount of people who just put the pill in their mouth and THEN drink water surprises me. Every time I’ve done that with a specific type of pill, it would leave some extremely bitter powder on my tongue! Easily avoidable by putting water in first.
I misheard my mom and started putting them under my tongue as a kid then using the water to swish it down. Works relatively well
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I feel like putting the pills in your mouth first works a bit better when you have a bunch of pills to take. I take four pills every morning (ADHD, antidepressant, allergy pill, and L-methylfolate because of dumb genes) and I’ve tried both ways. The pills-first approach is just faster and easier for me, and I don’t mind the taste. Hell, I weirdly like the taste of my ADHD meds 😅 I will absolutely do the water first thing when taking something disgusting though. I tend to close my mouth and tilt my head forward rather than back, however.
I don’t know why my client posted this comment 4 times… Sorry about that.
Lol. I hear ya, but I have taken like 6 pills at once using the water first method. That’s fair, to each their own!
Put pill in mouth, swallow pill. People hate this one weird trick!
I don’t like to do it, but sometimes I gotta take a pill and have no beverage.
a lot of you here missed the point that this was how to get KIDS to swallow the pills. not you.
Same thing
Oh wow, I’m gonna try this next time I need to down an ibuprofen
Aight, lots of discussion on tricks here - adding one to the pile.
Use food.
Especially fibery food that still has some texture when you chew it up, vs something like a banana that just chews down to a liquid anyway.
Think like Triscuits or something.
Anywho, add food of choice to your face. Chew it up until you’re ready to swallow- but don’t swallow. Grab your pill, and shove it right into the middle of your mass of Triscuit paste. Then swallow.
The mass of food will just push the pill right along with it - you’ll barely even notice it’s there.
People struggle with liquids because they just wash around the pill without pushing it.
Food is king for pill taking.
Apple sauce or ice cream work well
Yeah I would probably start there instead of triscuit paste but, hey, everyone has their own style!
your mass of Triscuit paste
Thanks for ruining Triscuits for me.
can’t even get my adult partner to take pills normally. It’s soo ridiculous the hoops a person would go through to avoid a slight bitter taste.
For me it’s the size. Can not really trick my body to just swallow. „But that’s huge! We have to chomp on it to break it down! Trying to kill yourself by choking?“
For normal pills I don’t even need water for pills. I just swallow. My partner always makes me drink it afterward cause you are supposed to.
But those monster size ones! I’m like wtf why not make it 2 smaller one jerks!If they’re the hard pills, you can just cut them in half or even quarters if they’re big enough.
Should I schedule my press conference?
This is not always true. Some tablets are extended release and if you break them apart the timing is thrown off. You get a higher dose initially, and the dose doesn’t last the intended period.
A family friend learned this the hard way when they were breaking a seizure preventive tablet in half to make it easier to swallow; they’d often have a recurrent seizure about an hour or two before their next dose time.
Maybe I’m making a bad assumption that it was made that big for a reason. It’s probably money…
Depends on the type of pill. Something easily desolvable like melatonin will dissolve in my throat of I don’t take it with water.
Now that’s a bitter taste that comes back up
Oh wow. Makes sense.
Drop your neck to your chest, it opens up your throat and makes putting things down your throat much easier
I’m a 34 y/o man and I need tricks to swallow pills. It has nothing to do with taste at all, it’s about capability. I actually have a condition that makes it difficult to swallow.
It’s literally just taste for my partner.
It’s soo ridiculous the hoops a person would go through to avoid a slight bitter taste.
I figured out a fix for the avoidance of horrible tasting medicine:
The simplest and easiest way to use it is with an ice cube or two. Get the pill/liquid medicine you have to get down your throat ready, your ice cubes, a cup of water and stand in front of a sink. Put the ice in your mouth and let it sit on your tongue for 15 to 60 seconds. Yes, its going to be cold and slightly uncomfortable. The longer you can stand it the better your result. After this time has passed with the ice in your mouth your tongue will be numb. Spit out the ice in the sink, you’ll have 5-15 seconds where you can’t taste a goddamn thing which is plenty of time. At this point you could put the most disgusting flavored thing (sour, bitter, etc) and you won’t be able to taste it. Quickly get the medicine in your mouth and chug that full glass of water. Taste will start to return within about 3 or 5 seconds of chugging water, so make sure you drink enough to clear your mouth of whatever bad flavor you’re trying to avoid.
This whole process adds perhaps 2 minutes tops to taking medicine. For those that have difficulty this is a tiny fraction of time usually spent avoiding taking it, or the recovery process for taking it normally.
If you need more incentive (especially for kids) instead of using ice cubes and spitting that out. You can use ice cream or milk shakes and just swallow those. Same rules apply: put the ice cream in your mouth and let it sit on your tongue as long as its frozen. Its a little more involved than ice cubes because you might have to have two or three spoonfuls to get your tongue numb.
An Interesting strategy. I will see if your idea works better. Cause putting it In pudding does not work.
My partner opens mouth wide almost dislocating jaw and carefully puts pill at back of mouth and then immediately drinks something favored to wash off taste. Its like the conehead dentist scene wide. I’m scared choking is going to happen eventually.
It may depend quite a bit on the pill. As an adult I can easily dry swallow things like ibuprofen. But I’m not sure about something like oral steroids.
I was prescribed them as a kid due to a particularly bad poison ivy reaction. I couldn’t swallow pills at the time, so after running through all the tricks to teach someone, we ended up grinding them up and sticking them in ice cream. It was something like 15 years before I could eat cookies and cream again without tasting steroids. Grinding them definitely exacerbated the problem, but I’m not sure how I’d fare if prescribed the same pills again.
Yeah it’s wild how adding some pills to strawberry yogurt just makes for really really fucking bitter yogurt.
Yeah I learned how to dry swallow after almost that same incident cause I wasn’t ruining food I liked anymore
Wait what? That works??
If they’ll hold the pill in their mouth… Mine will spit if it is even a tiny bit sour or bitter.
Serious question - since when do pills have taste?
I’m with you. They exist, but I definitely haven’t had one in a lonnng time.
I mean, if you tried to chew them thatd be a different story. Don’t do that.
The cheap Walmart ibuprofen tastes like chalk or you don’t immediately swallow it
My Adderall comes in 2 forms: overly sweet & the worst thing that’s ever been in my mouth
Capsules don’t, tho
Some prescriptions and a good chunk of supplements have a taste.
Yeah, my blood pressure meds are pressed tablets that start dissolving right away and are extremely bitter. Not antibiotics bitter (thank god!), but still extremely unpleasant.
I’m surprised by the amount of people in this thread having trouble taking pills. It’s not really something I’ve ever thought about or heard other people struggle with but hey there it is
It took me a long time to get over it. I’m still not the best at taking pills.
I suspect some people just naturally have a harder time than others with it.
I’m normally fine but something about the shape and texture of the standard ibuprofen tablet just sticks to my throat, or at least feels like it’s sticking to my throat.
Former pharmacy tech here, 8 years compounding pharmacy.
Get a mortar and pestle, crush it up and put it in whatever.
If not then use yogurt or something gooey.
Aren’t there slow-release pills that shouldn’t be crushed?
Only EC(Enteric Coated) pills and capsule interiors cause they protect the pill against stomach acid until it reaches the intestine.
If it’s got a shiny exterior like an Advil it’s Enteric coated. If it’s a capsule with EC granules you’re gonna have a hard time crushing it anyway.
You’re probably not going to have a problem with those though because Enteric coating is super sweet and capsules are usually neutral in flavor, so there’s not much reason to try and hide the bitterness. For everything else there’s no real functional difference between a smashed pill and a whole pill in your stomach.
Edit: You should definitely consult with a pharmacist or even better a compounding pharmacist about this if you’re not sure what kind of pill you’re looking at, though.
I would suggest you [the reader] ask your doctor before actually doing this, just so you don’t accidentally overdose someone (especially kids, who are more sensitive to dosage)
(I am not a doctor)
Yea I should have put an asterisk.
I’d go further and say you should ask a pharmacist about questions like these. Even better is to ask a compounding pharmacist, as a doctor or retail pharmacist might just recite the pharmacopeia to you while a compounding pharmacist will probably explain in more detail (likely as a play to offer their services lol).
There’s ER and other formulations you wouldn’t want to crush, it’s not just EC to avoid.
So it technically depends on the extended release formulation, so from a layman’s perspective, yes you should likely ask your doctor or even better ask a compounding pharmacist (as a general rule if you have questions about medication you’re better off asking a pharmacist rather than a doctor.)
Given that…
From a technical perspective the only definition of extended release is a lag phase after ingestion. This means there’s no immediately discernable difference between delayed release through anti-dissolution coating and slow dissolution through a hard-to-dissolve substance. (Even when you read something like two different pills saying delayed release vs extended release, there’s no legal difference and the FDA doesn’t give a fuck about the naming. This might be different in other countries so Americans benefit from other Country’s health systems in naming. I’m not sure.)
Coating-type pill formulations should not be crushed.
Suspension-type formulations actually can be crushed to a certain degree. Typically humans aren’t going at the pills like crazy in a mortar and pestle and don’t have the strength to separate the suspension properly so it’ll still have a slowed release effect. But yea if you smash them too hard then yea you can actually mess up the way that works.
Yes. Most ER/XR/CD/EC shouldn’t be. There’s some others that shouldn’t. Good to ask a pharmacist.
As a kid the bitterness of the crushed pill made me gag, even when mixed in something sweet like jam. Maybe my folks just needed to dilute it more with like an entire bowl of ice cream or something but I remember throwing up more than once because of the disgusting taste.
This is because Mary Poppins lied to us. It isn’t a spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down, but something with a bit of salt in addition to that sugar. Salt masks bitterness.
meanwhile I chewed grapefruit and pomelo peels after eating the juice part, chewed whatever pills were given to me, chewed single coffee beans, other weird shit. I don’t have the addiction any more after hitting my head a few more times.
toothpase though… somehow all of it fucks me up to varying degrees. I have settled on two that give me heartburn even if im super careful not to swallow any. the rest make me throw up or feel really not good.
Are you… Ok?
By the way if anyone’s curious yes you can crush up Viagra, put it in Vaseline, and use it as a cream.
Yes you can put it there, and yes it’s effective.
I’ve done it multiple times for people that would regularly go over that five hour limit, because skin absorption is slower and weaker than intestinal absorption.
Using yogurt, pudding, or apple sauce were always winners for me to get the kids to take pills.
Great for methylfenidaat…
Why are people talking about cats? That’s not how you get a cat to take a pill.
Depakote is an absolute motherfucking horse pill and a really wild patient often ends up on 1.5g (which is THREE horsepills) or more and a patient that wild often doesn’t want the depakote so I’m stuck trying to convince someone who doesn’t want to stop feeling like Jesus and Superman’s love child into choking down these fucking golf balls (I’m exaggerating but the point is they’re the biggest pills I administer by a long shot) and they don’t even make injectable mood stabilizers so the courts can order backup injectables but they’re usually benzos or antpsychotics which can help but won’t really do enough and they can order it as a syrup which helps with cheeking but tastes nasty (but I do usually get a laugh asking if they want some salt and lime with it) and it’s just… ergsdhcktdfnaajkfdv
Anyway the nurse trick is to give it with a spoonful of something thick like applesauce, pudding, or yogurt. It can help with the taste but more importantly thicker substances are easier for your pharynx to control as part of the swallowing reflex (we actually have beverage thickener on most nursing units for this exact reason). You don’t even need to crush most pills (you’re not trying to hide it, you’re just giving the throat something easier to direct down the correct pipe) just plop them on top of the spoonful and you’ll be able to swallow them much easier.
I know there is a reason for it to exist but I don’t like the idea/concept of a beverage thickener…
Pre-thickened water isn’t any less of a distrubing concept. “Here. Drink this water, it’s the same consistency of saliva.”
Then there’s the people that can’t have anything thinner than jello. I shuddered the first time I watched someone chew water
when i was in icu for 10 weeks, i learned this trick:
put the whole load of pills in your mouth, no water needed. then swallow them.
i dont know how i do it, i dont know why i couldnt do it before, i dont know how to explain it.
but i definitly can swallow half a handfull of pills just like that.
i learned it because that whole routine with glass of water and one pill at a time just was a PITA, when you are in icu for a good reason.
Why would you do one pill at a time? Just put em all in and wash the pills down with a glass of water.
I can’t swallow pills without water. They get stuck in the back of my throat.
Yep. I learned I can swallow about 20 pills in one gulp of water. Sorry for all you folks out there that say you can’t swallow pills, it’s a psychological issue.
It is, but I ain’t gonna argue with my brain.
Yeah I had it when I was a kid. For whatever reason my brain just wouldn’t allow it to happen and my tongue would grab the pill before I could swallow it. It cause a lot of problems. I don’t know what happened and I can’t even remember when it happened but one day it was just gone and I’ve never had an issue swallowing pills since.
it was a trick learned out of nescessity ;-)
yeah, I think it worked because they gave me lots of fluids anyway, I never had a dry mouth or sore throat.
