So, were we the test subjects for "take a pill to fix it?"

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LuckyAd2714@reddit

I didn’t take anything. My mom was crunchy. I’ll tell you what tho - I always wanted some of that aspir gum ,, it had aspirin in it? Anyone get to use that stuff ??

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ksborne@reddit

I'd never heard of it until you mentioned it. Feel like I need to look it up now lol

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LuckyAd2714@reddit

It’s aspergum and I guess it’s discontinued

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alicecuriouser@reddit

I LOVED Aspirgum, I used to sneak it/ ask for it all the time. That and baby aspirin. I was a weird kid.

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xpunkrockmomx@reddit

Ok. That stuff was good. I don't know if it helped, but yeah it had aspirin. It was for sore throat. Seems like it worked, but i liked the taste also.

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biscuitsmomma@reddit

Born in '69, was not given any meds other than something like Dimetapp when needed. Never took any drugs and don't take any meds now, just supplements.

But to answer your question, your memory is valid because it was your experience.

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Critical_Purple_8600@reddit

I loved those little orange flavored chewable baby aspirin

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Ahodrian123@reddit

Aspergum! That was the thing in the mid-70s for pediatric pain relief if your kid couldn’t swallow pills. Chewable OTCs came later. Flintstones chewable vitamins were the precursor.

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Flat_6_Theory@reddit

Dad felt himself very well qualified to dispense pills because his dad was a doctor. His prescription for crying children was a bottle of milk with a shot of scotch.

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My Irish Nan used to rub Irish whiskey on our gums when we were teething, if we had a nasty cold, it was tea with lemon and honey and a good belt of whiskey. When I would have horrible menstrual cramps, my mom would give me blackberry brandy. Now days, if someone did that CPS would be called.

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rdnkgrrl18@reddit

Me and my bestie (47 and 50 respectively) both rubbed a lil’ whiskey on our kids gums when teething. Now, both our youngest, who are boys (24 and 26) have our first grands and you’d have thunk we abused these kids when we tell them this!! They say they dunno how they survived and I believe hers called her barbaric 😆 They’re out here looking for dye free Tylenol for their littles … different times

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chartreuse_avocado@reddit

My mom took me over to the neighbors for whiskey for teething on more than one occasion because my parents didn’t drink.
Yeah. That makes sense. 🙄

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crashin70@reddit

My dad put Seagram's 7 in my baby bottles because it'll put a colichy baby to sleep! Started my alcoholic journey really young...

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CatherineC1979@reddit

Maybe, so many people won’t tablets and I’m baffled, take the drugs and carry on with your life 💃💃

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rdnkgrrl18@reddit

My ‘rents weren’t big into giving medicine unless a doc prescribed it for a serious issue. My father’s family were those that didn’t go to a hospital (there were 13 kids, dad being the youngest) and also believed that once you let them cut on you, it was just letting everything bad go in your body. I don’t remember either grandparent taking daily meds and they lived to 91 and 94. Now my mom, her mama and dad took a couple (mebbe BP and grampa’s sugar) but not as many as my mother had to take today. Me? The first time I took a narcotic pain med, I felt like I could do anything. My mom always tells a story about being in the hospital to have me and her wisdom tooth cut and was impacted. She was given percodan and she said she was happy off in la la land. 😆 mebbe that’s why I loved the droogs like I did 🤷🏻‍♀️

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john-bkk@reddit

My parents didn't give us much medication for anything; if symptoms were severe enough some standard OTC drug, but rarely. We had to be in a unique state for things to go there.

I remember seeing a propaganda movie warning about drugs when I was young, about a guy who got hooked, and took all sorts of things. They actually made it look interesting and pleasant; he was listening to music and looking at disco lights, and it seemed reasonable.

I smoked a little weed in high school but didn't try anything else until my 20s, with one exception. A friend's aunt--I think it was--sent him some crystal meth to try, kind of a crazy thing to do. I stayed up all night, and got grounded, and my best friends snorted that for two days until it was gone. I might have never tried coke because of that; it seemed pleasant in an unusual way, but it was pretty obvious how destructive doing it would be.

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alicecuriouser@reddit

I used to take anything and everything - including sampling my grandparents' prescriptions and downing a dangerous amount of diet pills and gas station speed. I'm lucky to have survived my own stupidity. Now I won't take anything, not even OTC meds (except chewable baby aspirin if I have a headache - fortunately rare these days).

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vin4thewin@reddit

I used to pop Advil like it was sugar. In fact, it had a candy-flavored coating. Now my doctor says no more NSAIDS after looking at my liver test results. :(

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babyton@reddit

My grandmother gave us Valium for everything. Headaches, backache, twisted ankle or a cold. She'd say go get take one of those blue pills out if my purse and it always worked so I never questioned it.

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Bright-Form730@reddit

I think I’d be constantly ill over at grandmas 🤣

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Juli3tD3lta@reddit

Spend a week at her house and you’ll get ill from leaving!

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ksborne@reddit

I feel like the 50's and 60's are a better example of that.

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EdenSilver113@reddit

Years and years after Tylenol with codeine and caffeine was discontinued OTC my grandma still had it. When the announcement was made she stocked up. It was the most amazing headache cure.

My gran was born before 1920 and when she died mom sold our house and we moved into her house. Mom wanted a phone line in the master bedroom. I was the tinker in my fam, so I went under the house to run a phone line. I found empty laudanum bottles in the crawl space under the house. It immediately made me wonder if her mom had done the same thing with laudanum.

I know my gran had debilitating headaches her whole life.

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Scary_Possible3583@reddit

The years after the crackdown on opioids and before legalization of marijuana were rough on "headachey" women.

My entire family would get their max painkillers for dental work, sprains, etc. And give them to me. I used 6-10 per year, when the sinus headaches were so bad I couldn't stop vomiting.

The laws changed, and my doctor said I would have to go to see a pain specialist. He could give me a really expensive drug that could screw up my heart, or another that could give me a brain hemmorage, but no Vicodin.

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Fred_Scuttle@reddit

“Mother’s Little Helper” and all that.

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ksborne@reddit

Exactly what I was thinking of

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rosesforthemonsters@reddit

My grandmother had the opinion that, for the grandkids, baby aspirin would cure anything. The doctor we went to gave us those little paper packets of terramycin or penicillin no matter what ailment we had.

The irony was that my grandmother was taking every pharmaceutical under the sun, including Valium that she'd been taking non-stop for 30 years. The doctor she went to had her on pills for everything. At one time, she had a Tupperware bread box filled to capacity with prescription drugs. She was probably taking 50+ pills a day.

I borrowed a drug reference book from the library one time and was telling my grandmother that half the meds she was taking were counteracting the other half. Some of the stuff she was on should not have been taking in combination with other meds she was taking. She told me to mind my own business.

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JellyfishFit3871@reddit

Sounds familiar. My grandmother didn't mind doctor-shopping to get prescriptions. Most egregiously, she was on two benzodiapine medicines simultaneously for about 40 years, and had a standing prescription for mepergan. Her doseages would have killed the average horse!

But heaven forbid is my grandfather had a beer.

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writergal75@reddit

How old did your grandma live to be?

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JellyfishFit3871@reddit

Surprisingly, 91.

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MyLittlPwn13@reddit

I just know I loved me some Dexatrim. You don't need food if you're wired on pills.

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sherrib99@reddit

Omg we used to take those right before going out…. “So we could drink more” lol

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MyLittlPwn13@reddit

We were geniuses, truly.

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sherrib99@reddit

The good ole days!

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writergal75@reddit

I’m a GenX-er and I definitely grew up taking a pill for whatever ailed me. Nothing intense or illegal, but we had a pretty substantial kitchen cabinet that was dedicated to medications. I wasn’t really afraid to try medicine, which isn’t really all that great of a trait imo. Weirdly, my paternal grandmother was anti- medication, and I believe the only thing she takes now is blood pressure meds (she’s 96).

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Tom_Michel@reddit

My parents were somewhat med averse. If I went to school with a sore throat, dad would give me two Sucretes, no more, no less. I had to ration them, one for the morning, one for the afternoon. The only thing I got regularly was a Flintstones vitamin in the morning. It was orange Triaminic if I was sick. Man, I loved the taste of that stuff. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD pretty young and was on Ritalin for a while. Apparently, the pediatrician gave my parents a script for Ritalin for me, too, circa 1984, but I was managing to get by in school so my parents decided to keep me med free. I don't blame them, not entirely, but I do wonder how different things could have been if I'd had the same opportunity.

I'm not a fan of taking unnecessary medications and supplements, but I am in the camp of better living through chemistry. My health and quality of life are better with meds than without. I have no issues with that. I see my docs; I take my meds. *shrug*

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writergal75@reddit

2 Sucrets for the whole school day! That’s so funny to me! Man our parents were weird. It definitely sounds like something my dad would’ve done.

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airckarc@reddit

I was a medic in the Army, early 90s. They had an assortment of pills they thought we should take. “What is that one”? “Oh, it’ll keep you from dying from nerve gas.” I can say that I 100% gave every Joe in my platoon those pills. Can’t say if they took ‘em. I certainly didn’t.

They also decided they needed everyone’s DNA. They used the excuse that the 101st Airborne lost a bunch of guys in a plane crash and many couldn’t be IDed. They promised they’d never share our DNA but nobody believed that. Whoever bought our batch must have been disappointed.

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wonderbeen@reddit

They told us in the Navy in ‘94 that they were keeping it ID my body. Good luck finding it, I served on a SSBN.

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Lumpy-Artist-6996@reddit

Not at my house, anyway. My parents were more like of the only take antibiotics if necessary types. I had all my vaccines, and when the flu came around we hot Nyquil for the worst days, but it wasn't a daily or weekly or even monthly thing to take OTC medication.

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cagirlinoh@reddit

Jokingly, I think my mom was in the test group for Zoloft. She used to have a shirt (this I’m not kidding) that read: “ I used to care but now I take a pill for that.” 😏

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DandelionPopsicle@reddit

I took Zoloft when I was 23, within a month I attempted suicide. Turns out that’s a side effect in young people. Oops.

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cagirlinoh@reddit

Oh my gosh 😳 Hopefully you have a better plan of care than you did back then. 🙏 My mom stopped taking it as well, long time ago.

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DandelionPopsicle@reddit

Yeah, that was decades ago. A lot more together now. I should be on antipsychotics/mood stabilizer, but can’t afford to right now. Still far from at risk, other than statistically.

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cagirlinoh@reddit

That’s good news. 😊

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theghostofcslewis@reddit

I always had an aversion to pills—even today. I doubt I would have made it through the Opioid epidemic otherwise. (Is it over?)

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PurplePenguinCat@reddit

Not for all of us (chronic pain patients).

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Fit_Poetry_267@reddit

My mom kept childrens aspirin in my room - I ate it like candy. Then she'd just hand me small sample cough syrup bottles and chloriseptic to take to school and I downed it before I ever got off the bus.

She got wise and cut me off - and despite my early start I really never drank, smoked or did any drugs after that. Even now I dont take meds unless I absolutely have to.

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CallingDrDingle@reddit

No, I've always taken as little medication as possible.

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VinceP312@reddit

The first prescription pill I ever took was for blood pressure. (Other than antibiotics)

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Melodic_War327@reddit

I've had some prescription antibiotics and what not over the years Usually stuff that lasted a certain amount of time and then was gone. Blood pressure meds are the first stuff I have had to take that I probably won't ever be able to stop. I guess I am something of a highly sensitive person, I can't even take most opioids without getting violently ill, so I have to hope that aspirin or Aleve will do the job. Made having my wisdom teeth out oh so fun.

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allaboutaphie@reddit

They went from over prescribing to now adays they dont like to give out any have prescriptions which in reality is better. Broke my foot a few years ago and they said take ibuprofen, 30 years ago I would have been prescribed some good feeling drugs lol But in honesty ibuprofen was all I really needed.

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VinceP312@reddit

Except for one time when I thought for some reason the bottle "take as needed for pain*, I never went through an entire first script of pain killers.

They never really made me high. Plus it was only for post-op pain relief, no chronic pain.

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