Is this real? Who gets a liver donor in 4 days?
Sounds like American healthcare to me.
You either cope, and probably cause irreparable hard to yourself, or you go to the clinic or ER and get labeled a drug seeker.
I had intense tummy aches for 15 days where I couldn’t walk and needed to keep heat to my belly to even function, once my pain killers didn’t work, I didn’t push it, I just tried to handle the pain
I cried a lot in that time, it fucking sucked, but it sure was better than liver failure.
He’s lucky it was just his liver. People who overdose or try to commit suicide with it are not in for a good time or quick death and after it’s absorbed into your body it will cause a systemic shutdown of several organs like the kidneys and pancreas. Not just the liver, and there’s absolutely no way to counteract this after that first 36 hours. You will die (you aren’t getting all of the organs replaced) and it will take days before you succumb. No antidote or life support or anything can be done for you.
You’ll feel fine the first day but may have some vomiting. By day 3 the jaundice and stomach pain sets in as the liver is first to show signs of the organs failure and it’s no longer possible to counteract the drug. By the fourth day your organs start shutting down and you’ll have much more pain and vomiting. All that can be done is get your affairs in order because you’ll be dead and in pain while you wait around to die and regret your suicide.
I say suicide because it’s almost always intentional. It usually takes 40 325mg pills to cause this, although the liver damage can be caused with 20+ pills in an adult, generally. If you think you’ve possibly overdosed get to the hospital quick and tell them what you’ve taken so they can start you on Acytylcystine. If you “feel fine” after the first day or so and think you’re all good you may be wrong and when day Tyree rolls around and your feeling bad or jaundiced your liver is already wrecked and can’t be fixed.
What’s a better pill to kill yourself with?
Just better, a rusty hammer
Cyanide
Gonna need something stronger, noted.
ITT: People who don’t know the difference between acute and chronic ODs and how a smaller amount over a long period can hurt you. 325mg APAP x4 will not kill you short term.
The problem was taking it every day over a long period.
Its still fucking stupid though.
How big is a packet?
Asking the real questions.
Kinda surprised you didn’t give some it answer
Not “even paracetamol”. ESPECIALLY paracetamol.
Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol is both weak ass painkiller and really dangerous because the overdose line is low. Here they put it in synthetic opioid drugs, it doesn’t help with pain but does make them more dangerous.
It’s good at reducing fever
oh yea it isnt as good as other otc nsaids, like ibuprofen and naproxen, or aspirin. oh and that fake pseudoephedrine mimic(phenyleprine) for cogestion, they already said it has no effect whatsoever. its mostly the 1st generation antihistamines doing all the work for your sinuses when you have the cold anyways.
Let’s say the maximum recommended dose is the “dangerous dose.” That’s 4 grams. 20x4=80 grams of paracetamol/acetaminophen. That’s like 160 goddamn pills
The maximum recommended dose is generally much below the LD50 of a drug.
It also tends to be the maximum recommended dose for short term dosage for painkillers.
His issue was taking this for a long period.
It’s people like this who make other people think any amount of painkillers is bad, and seem to get a sense of superiority about them for never taking any.
Even a little acetaminophen makes my liver feel funny the next day. Ibuprofen actually works for pain relief for me (migraines mostly) but it can cause stomach ulcers. Painkillers are definitely not something you can just use without thinking, and daily use especially can fuck your body up, ibuprofen is also hard on your kidneys.
Take the minimum effective dose as infrequently as possible.
did you ever check your liver? that doesnt sound normal. with a small dose.
nsaids can cause bleeding and ulcers if itsa high dose. its because it inhibits cox 1 and 2, for clotting, and it works on your stomach by turning off inflammation, so your stomach can combat the acid with more mucus and cell turnover(inflammation increases cell turnover), thats why h pylori is a thing.
It’s bizarre to me that someone can make it to adulthood without knowing that paracetamol specifically is no fucking joke.
People look up resources on them and see that the recommended max dose of ibuprofen is lower than paracetamol per day in weight of the active ingredient and stop reading.
They don’t get to the part about how the effect per weight isn’t the same. Or how damaging paracetamol can be for the liver if you take it regularly or go over the recommend limit. Heavy drinkers especially don’t take into account the extra stress on their liver, which is a contributor to the 400-500 deaths it causes every year in the US alone.
Meanwhile ibuprofen makes you feel sick and want to vomit once you start to go over the recommended limit. And if you reach that stage, you basically just stay hydrated to keep your kidneys going and wait for it to pass. Since it usually takes another 2-3 times as much to for the severe effects to occur.
To quote Scrubs:
Dr. Cox: Did you just page me to ask me how much ibuprofen to give Mrs. Lenzner here?
Sunny: Well, I was worried it would exacerbate the patient’s
Dr. Cox: It’s ibuprofen! Here’s what you do. When she wakes up, get her to open her mouth nice and wide, then get some of those ibuprofen pills in your hands and throw them at her. Whatever sticks in there, that’s the correct dosage.
And in the pilot episode, it was J.D. and regular strength Tylenol.
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is definitely tough on the liver. I remember during EMT classes (well, I kinda remember, was 20 years ago) having one of the paramedics in the class talking about how it was worse on the liver than heroin. Now yes, heroin obviously has other downsides, but it’s just crazy to think about. I have always limited my intake of it, never take it if I’ve been drinking, that sort of thing. The issue is that it’s not exactly common knowledge. I know plenty of people who would drink and take some Tylenol at bedtime to kill the hangover. Not a good habit.
It’s not common knowledge?
It’s common knowledge, in the same way that “you shouldn’t text and drive” is common knowledge. People know it, and ignore it
not everyone studies drugs
there is a stark difference between “studies drugs” and “does the bare minimum research on the pharmaceuticals one puts into their body”
It is absolutely imperative that you understand the safety profile of ANY substance entering your body.
I was about to make a joke about understanding the safety profile of the air you breathe, and then I remembered I work near various chemicals… Mfs have mixed clorox and lysol at my workplace before. Safety is no joke
not following safety is frequently funny, almost no safety procedures are funny, not following safety wins.
I was taught this as an actual child because it’s so important and paracetamol is so common. It’s nothing to do with “studying drugs”.
You know what else is stupid? Pain management in the US. I get that you need to be careful about addiction, but the idea that people should have to suffer pain because we’re having a pain medication “reefer madness” spasm is idiocy.
The guy just kept taking them until his teeth stopped hurting. Why is the alternative that he just has to put up with being in pain?
Yes it is. I have had, over my 40 years as migraineuse (they started in my teens) 5 intractable migraines. Meaning less than once every 5 years I get one that lasts days, I cannot eat or drink, just puke. I used to be able to go to my doctor and get shot up with opiates and Phenergan, so much of it, they would do one dose, come back later, another, another, another, until finally I would say “it still hurts but I don’t care” and go home nodding like a junkie, sleep and wake up with no headache, and, importantly, NO desire for more drugs.
Now the opiates are not allowed because they didn’t work. But nothing works on the status migraine. Now they give you a cold cocktail IV of some sort of Advil and nausea medicine and it doesn’t work either, and costs $2,000 because it can only be done in the emergency room not the doctor office.
It’s adding insult to injury. There has to be some way to make these available for acute situations at least.
Yeah, I’ve dealt with massive tooth pain before. Given a choice between going through a week of that pain, and maybe killing myself with pills, I’ll take my chances with the pills.
We have never had good pain management here. Claiming babies can’t feel pain, black people hace higher pain tolerance, etc etc. then we swung into really permissive use with oxycodone for a while.
The fact that the drug companies lied about the addictiveness of their product so doctors were handing them out like candy didn’t help.
Yeah, it was rampant here in Jersey, and we’re definitely still feeling the effects. Things that didn’t need opiates got opiates. And guess what? Lotta people all of a sudden need them for life. And it wasn’t just Oh, here’s your script. Doctors were knowingly abusing it for profit. So like with most things in life, some people ruin it for everyone else.
How much is a “packet”? edit: never mind, I found several conflicting answers in the other comments, no need to add even more and add to the confusion.
Too much
PSA: stupidity is dangerous
Stupidity? The dude is living in constant pain from dental issues and was just trying to not suffer.
Desperation is not stupidity.
Yeah, how long until this idiot cooks this liver too?
Honestly, getting a liver transplant in a week is the most unbelievable part of this story.
Happened to me. It was actually 6 days. Listed on a Friday, transplant was done the following Wednesday.
Wild
It really just depends on how sick you are, and where you are, at least in the US.
For liver they use something called a MELD score. Kidney they use GFR, maybe other things, not as sure on that.
Where matters because the US is broken into transplant regions and you can only receive an organ for a region where you’ve been listed.
That’s why, if you have money, you could go to a couple regions and get listed, then travel wherever the first organ is available.
In this particular case it was probably pretty important to transplant quickly, otherwise his kidneys likely would have failed.
This man’s life drastically changed because he made a really poor decision.
Here’s to hoping that I never have to find out first hand.
Just a literal Life Pro Tip for anyone still reading, sign up for organ donation. It will cost you nothing, the urban myths about hospitals harvesting the organs out of “locked in” locked in donors are total BS, but the lives you can save are very real.
That’s just natural selection doing its thing
It isn’t “natural selection” when it was caused by systemic issues preventing the man from receiving adequate dental healthcare.
Someone didn’t get a live because it was used for this dumbass
People who make mistakes deserve to live too. Don’t be like that. We’ve all done stupid shit, he just happened to kill his liver with this one.
It’s why in the UK shops won’t sell more than 2 packets at a time. It’s statistically reduced the amount of people killing themselves with them (intentionally or by mistake).
It’s OTC right? What’s stopping people from visiting multiple pharmacies?
Nothing. However it adds a layer of difficulty to acquiring more. That, for a lot of people, is enough.
Inconvenience
It is stupid scary how a lot of what prevents people from doing the most outlandish shit is just being designed in a way that is mildly inconvenient.
It’s also utterly depressing that the reason things don’t improve is usually just because making those improvements would be mildly inconvenient in the meantime.
Studying wildlife conservation, and a lot of the studying on presenting findings to the government for policy decisions or to Garner public support is how to make it sound convincing. The key to it is to make it more convenient that whatever they are currently used to doing. That’s it. If you can do that, you’re almost guaranteed to get your policies passed.
This is the reason why medication that can be used for self harm (including death) comes in blister packages and not in bottles.
Its inconvenient, and takes enough time to give your brain some more time to think
Technically nothing but even the fact that it is limited is a deterrent for buying too much, plus people are too lazy to visit multiple pharmacies.
American here: I know paracetamol is acetaminophen, but how much is a packet?
Depends on the country I guess.
Here, a packet is 16 tablets of 500mg (acetaminophen) or 200mg (ibuprofen).
We’re limited to 2 packets combined per purchase to reduce the chances of severe overdose.
Package dosing generally suggests 2 tablets per dose, with at least 4 hours between.
Or one tablet for children between 10 and 14.paracetamol packet
It looks like it’s a sheet of 6-8 pills
https://www.nps.org.au/news/paracetamol-ibuprofen-combinations-for-acute-pain
Various countries limit painkillers to small packet sizes (e.g. 20 pills here in Germany) and pharmacies only hand them out one at a time, so you can’t overdose as easily/spontaneously, either like the person in the post did due to pain, or for suicidal purposes.
It’s not perfect protection, as you can just go to multiple pharmacies to buy multiple packets, but yeah, you will have to actually go do that and will get told at the pharmacy that you shouldn’t take more, if you’re not aware.Yikes! The use of the term “packet” was initially confusing to me. Here in the States it’s not uncommon to see small packets of a single dose of over the counter medicines in gas stations and convenience stores for when you’re not at home and something comes up. The directions for extra strength Tylenol are 2 every 6hrs (1000mg dose) not exceeding 3 doses per day.
I was thinking “4 packets over 3 days, what’s the big deal?”
they sell blister packs for tyelenol, but its usually thr brand name, which is pretty expensive.
Worth noting as well that the OP said four packs a day for three days.
i heard some people fitness takes these so they can train excessively longer than normal. it was a news article a certain group was discussing, and they were tellinig a story of a dude doing that, that guy got addicted for sure to the pain meds, because they said he couldnt do anything without them.
America… I remember seeing “value packs” of Tylenol containing 300 pills… that’s their idea of freedom… to allow people the choice of slow and agonizing suicide by liver failure
kids were trying to robotrip on dextrotomorphan, and now they require ID to buy any cold medicine that contains it.
The bottle on my shelf has 350 (new, Costco brand) but I don’t take over the recommended dose for obvious reasons. Guess it expired last year now that I look heh. The smaller bottles cost more per dose so no reason not buy a larger one. This is in Canada, not the US for people curious about other countries.
they sell larger bulk bottles, usually i buy them on amazon, in-stores are usually more expensive. i also use naproxen too.
That math doesn’t quite add up. Sure less per dose sounds good, but if you’re wasting half the bottle then paying a little more per dose but less total cost is still more economical.
i buy the larger ones online. better than buying the small ones. i do this for anti-histamines too, because i got allergies, i can get 1000tablets for the 1st generations easy, and cheaper pricing for the 2nd generation ones years worth. kirkland has the quality to it, im trying some off-brand(probably chinese made) doesnt seem as effective, and it was a wierd shape.
It may be less effective but you use it till the bottle is done, it’s not like milk it still works.
Ironically, for America, this is one area where you are expected to read the label and not be an absolute idiot.
Exactly, I know I can take 2 a day and a couple days and if the pain persists I ought to seek out medical help.
We know how to follow directions, we’re just not fucking gonna
according to the acetaminophen i’ve got at home, dangerous dosage is >4g per day. that means that if 4 packets was 20x that, each packet would be 20g, which, if they’re normal 500mg pills, would be 40 pills per packet.
you should stick to 3g a day if you’re overall a small person, some bottles will recommend this as the max to be safe
3-4000mg is toxic to the liver.
Therapeutic dose of acetaminophen is 15 mg/kg q6h prn. That dose of 4g/day ==> 1g/dose. 1000mg/(15mg/kg) = 66.67kg == 145lb.
That’s the minimum weight for that acetaminophen dosing. If you’re under that weight, you can consider the reduced dose. If you’re over 145lb, no need to worry. And honestly, I think I’m the only one who actually doses this stuff q6h anyway. I think most people end up doing TID dosing because that allows uninterrupted sleep.
Well, generally you’re only supposed to take ~2 tablets at a time, so 10? 40 pills a day is 13,000mg of acetaminophen, or 20,000mg if they’re extra strength.
That’s, uh, bad. You’re recommended to take under 4000mg per day, so that’d be a bit over a packet? Makes sense to me.
For the record, mixing two painkillers without consulting a doctor is also usually a bad idea but way fucking less of a bad idea than taking 13000mg of tylenol in a day. Afaik, acetaminophen with other stuff is probably fine but napoxen, ibuprofen, and aspirin all work roughly the same way and shouldn’t be mixed.
Don’t take my word for it but I think paracetamol and ibuprofen with added codeine can be taken together despite the double codeine as the amount they have is low enough that double is still safe.
Check with a pharmacist first, dosages are going to vary and I am just some guy on the internet.
For the record, mixing two painkillers without consulting a doctor is also usually a bad idea but way fucking less of a bad idea than taking 13000mg of tylenol in a day.
Basically, if something hurts so much that you might take enough paracetamol/acetaminophen to fuck with your liver then you yes, you should be under a doctor’s care. That said, between my wife and me, we’ve had three or four doctors over the years all be very chill with the idea of alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen after surgery or the like. I guess they work on such different chemical pathways that they don’t have much interaction potential, and keeping under the daily dose of Tylenol in particular is incredibly important, as we’ve seen in this thread.
tyelonol works on the liver, the others like ibuprofen, naproxen,etc works by inhibiting the cox1 and 2 enzymes. of courses take 2 much of the inhibitors is very similar to aspirin, it can prevent clotting(which in itself is a therapeuthic uses for clotting disorders)
yes, you should be under a doctor’s care.
That’s not always an option, unfortunately, but it’s definitely accurate.
They act on different systems, yes, but this is more about the metabolism of each.
Non-steroidal-anti-inflamatorirs can cause damage to your stomach and kidneys.
Acetaminophen/Paracetol metabolizes in the liver a similar way alcohol does, and like alcohol has a maximum rate of clearing the toxin.
I don’t think there’s a standard size, but I know they sell them in packages of 3x10 where I live. Eating 4 full packets of those in a day would put you at 15 times the upper recommended daily dosage, for what it’s worth, which is calculated slightly conservatively to not be lethal for any adults
You can also often get high-strength pills for chronic pain that are 665mg instead of the regular 500mg.
the ones for arthiritis, is around 625mg, with caffiene. i had 500mg naproxen Rx for buristis once, it can cause stomach issues, because it turns on inflammation, so the acid levels increase and can cause things like heartburns.
I believe I’ve seen them sold in 1g pills where I live as well.
Reading the meme it seems like a packet is five times the dangerous dosage.
