December 7th, 2005 by Jemaleddin Cole

This past week­end I got a runny nose. I mean, con­stantly runny – as in my face became a faucet. As an allergy-​sufferer, I’m used to this sort of thing and have strate­gi­cally placed Kleenex boxes by my tv-​watching chair, next to my com­puter, in my office and in my car. Before going into a store, I usu­ally stuff a wad of tis­sues into my jacket pocket just in case.

So when my nose started acting up Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I just took some Clar­itin and went on with my day. Right? Wrong.

After two hours I found myself in Target and run­ning out of tis­sues. I went to the phar­macy area and grabbed a plen-​t-​pak of Dayquil and Nyquil, a bottle of Coke (caf­feine seems to help my aller­gies), and a three-​pak of Kleenex. At the reg­is­ter, the cashier wanted my birth­date. This con­fused him more than it con­fused me – he actu­ally asked me why they would want to know how old I was.

I explained to him that Nyquil has chem­i­cals in it that people use to make crys­tal meth, and that appar­ently Target wanted to make sure that I was old enough to handle my high. Or some­thing. At this point, my head felt all cloudy and all I could do was head out­side and pop some pills.

Two hours later, I’m still a mess. My nose is rapidly red­den­ing to match my cheeks, my head feels like I’m stor­ing cheese where my brain is sup­posed to be, and I’m run­ning out of tis­sues again. I head home and grab some Benadryl. In my house, we con­sider Benadryl to be the nuclear option: you anni­hi­late your nasal prob­lems, but it takes out your brain at the same time. I headed back out to the mall.

After an hour of lead­ing two small chil­dren through Xmas mall traf­fic with my head still throb­bing and puls­ing, I give up and head home. I’ve thrown every­thing I can at this nose prob­lem and all I have to show for it is a waist-​deep pile of used tis­sues and a 10-point drop in my IQ.

And now, four days later, I find out that Vicks has changed the for­mula for Nyquil and Dayquil so that it no longer con­tains pseu­doephedrine. Great. Just great. I guess this means that in order to stop my next cold, I’ll have to smoke crys­tal meth.

Thanks a lot, Vicks. I’m adding you to the list along with Wyeth, the makers of Robi­tussin. I don’t care if kids are run­ning around with green teeth blow­ing up their houses: I want cold med­i­cine that works.

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