Cough Medicine

When I was growing up, cough medicine was used to treat a cough. Sometimes the doctor would prescribe a cough medicine that had codeine in it to help you sleep at night if the cough was affecting your ability to sleep and relax. Other times, you could simply walk into a drug store and find cough medicine in the aisles. There were no real problems with cough medicine. It was just something else that existed to help you feel better when you were under the weather.

A few weeks ago, in the middle of the cold and flu season, my daughter had a cold with a horrible cough. I walked into our local drugstore to find some cough medicine and was absolutely shocked to find that the cough medicine was behind a counter. I had to actually ask a clerk to hand me a bottle. When I questioned this new and strange situation, she told me that since cough medicine has become increasingly more common for abusing, it was to be behind the counter and regulated. I was shocked. And I had to admit, I wasn’t quite sure how you could abuse cough medicine. I purchased my cough medicine and went home to give it to my daughter. After doing some research, I discovered that teenagers have found ways to get high from cough medicine. The things I read were very disturbing. Teens, and others, consume large amounts of cough medicine in order to get a high. These highs have some very scary side effects that can be incredibly dangerous.

Who in the world ever discovered this way to get high, I found myself wondering? I also learned that 1 in every 10 teenagers has used cough medicine to get high. Wow. That means that over 2 million teenagers all over this country have experimented with this concept. Most of them learn about it from friends who have tried it, or get the idea from the internet. While the internet can be a wonderful source for excellent research, it is also responsible for giving some people some horrible ideas. This is one of them. Apparently, when the teens are reading how to abuse cough medicine, they are skipping over all of the negative side effects and consequences. Of course, teenagers usually feel that they are invincible. Some talk shows are interviewing teenagers and their parents about how this happens and how to stop it from occurring. While these shows may help some teens to stop abusing cough medicine, it may give others the idea of how to get a legal high.

I just find it ridiculous that people have found a way to get high off of something that was once easily accessible and a huge aid to people who were under the weather. Now, we have to be inconvenienced by getting our cough medicine from behind the counter simply because of people who need to get high. What’s next, abusing chicken noodle soup?