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?
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.
Yeah I’ve had daily meds since I was 6. I was confused when I first met people who couldn’t take pills
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.
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.
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!
This...works less well with kids.
damn, you beat me to it. can confirm, it works like a charm
a lot of you here missed the point that this was how to get KIDS to swallow the pills. not you.
Same thing
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
your mass of Triscuit paste
Thanks for ruining Triscuits for me.
Apple sauce or ice cream work well
Yeah I would probably start there instead of triscuit paste but, hey, everyone has their own style!
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?“
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My cat is the best in that regard: either he eats the pills straight or off my hand or I put it on the floor and put his favorite creamy treat on top
lucky you, my dog isn't like that. i either have to trick him with cheese or shove it down his throat and hold his mouth closed until he swallows.
I just slip it in the corner of his mouth, right on top of his tongue. Then I give him his favorite treat, kibble fresh out of the bowl.
I never tried that and, judging from the comments here, it's probably not going to work if I need to swallow pills. I can remember having 3 incidents where that murderous piece of shit tried to go down the breathing hole
You're trying too hard.
For me, it wasn't about swallowing the pill, it was a psychological thing about not chewing. I'd just take a small bite of bread, banana, or other soft food, chew a few times, pop the pill in and then swallow the food with the pill.
I'd try putting in water first, holding it in, leaning your head back slightly, then putting in the pill and swallowing immediately
If that doesn't work, you can try the food method that someone mentioned above
Why did she turn into Kermit?
Because there's s muppet deep down inside each of us controlling our every movement and word. Geez, it's like they never taught you basic biology in middle school.
Turn your head to one side, looking to your right (or left) in line with your shoulder, then take the pill as you normally would while you stay in that position. It will slide down much more easily than if you were facing forward.
My trick is to tap my upper and lower teeth together to poorly simulate chewing (avoiding the pill, of course) and then I'd just naturally feel the urge to swallow.
There's also the pill crusher + jam/jelly/applesauce method.
More here:
https://health.ucdavis.edu/children/patient-education/How-to-Help-a-Child-take-their-Medicine
Bad idea to crush pills. Depends on the pill, but you could end up in the ER.
Also a good point, for example the extended release type pills
Crushed up in jam is how I took paracetamol when a kid - if we'd run out of Dispirin. Couldn't and wouldn't swallow pills until I was prescribed some (quite large) antibiotics in my 20s. To take those, it was put it in my mouth and keep drinking water with my head back until it went down. It took quite a lot of water! These days I can take them with less water, usually just a sip.
All right but if you do that you lose a chance for some “sanctioned for the greater good” violence on the little kid. I hear there are parents who would pass on that but mine sure wouldn’t.
Am I the only one who hates jokes where the entire setup is "These kids I chose to have sure are a pain in the ass!"
Sure are.
I feel like "chose to have" is a bit strong when "chose not to abort" might be more accurate...
