The War on Drugs is Keeping Me Awake at Night

So, last week I stayed home sick from work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That's highly unusual for me--I'm one of those people who tries to attack the illness with Airborne and Trader Joe's supplements at the first sign of a sore throat. Often I win the battle. Even when I don't, I've been able to rely on DayQuil and NyQuil to help me soldier through the cold as a functioning human being. Like many other over-the-counter medicines, they once contained a magic ingredient called pseudoephedrine that helped me to breathe.

But then word got around to the powers-that-be that some folks, specifically long-distance truck drivers and athletes, were using cold meds as a stimulant. (The chemical structure of pseudoephedrine is very similar to amphetamines). And then, alas, illegal drug users began using innocuous decongestants in really unfortunate ways. So several state governments, including California, stepped in and started regulating the purchase of medications containing pseudoephedrine. At first this translated into a mere inconvenience for consumers---you had to buy DayQuil/Nyquil or its generic equivalent in the pharmacy section of the drugstore, instead of the regular checkout, and present a valid photo ID. But---bummer for me---the pharmaceutical firms responded to the regulations by reformulating their meds with a less effective ingredient, phenylephrine.

So now I can't sleep because I can't breathe well, and I end up calling in sick not just because I have a lil' ol' cold, but because I'm exhausted from not sleeping. And a cold that might have kept me out of the game for one day, if that, before The Prohibition, now requires a three-day marathon of bed rest. And I suppose that's not so bad, because I have the sort of job where I can be gone for three days, get paid for it, and still be employed when I come back on Monday. There are lots of other hardworking, honest Americans for whom that isn't the case. And they get sick, too.

Ka-chunk. (That would be the sound of me falling off my soapbox).