Pills

Necessary pain pills aside after surgeries, I hate hate hate having to take prescription medicine. I wasn’t a huge fan of birth control pills, but deemed them absolutely necessary (at least until about two weeks ago). :-) When I first started law school, I started to get awful heartburn and weird belching issues. Sometimes the only thing that would help would be for me to make myself throw up (no I was never a bulimic). I went to the doctor and was told that I had GERD (acid reflux disease). It was most likely due to the stress that I was under and the extra pounds that I was packing on.

So after making sure that I didn’t have any ulcers in my throat, I was put on Prevacid and Pepcid. The pills worked throughout law school and after the bar I decided to try to lower my dosage to one pill every other day. As in, I would take Prevacid the 1st day, Pepcid the 2nd day, Prevacid the 3rd day, Pepcid the 4th day, etc. That seemed to work okay too. Then my prescriptions ran out and I didn’t feel like going back to the doctor. So I started to buy the over the counter medicines and take them every other day. That made me feel a bit better as I knew that my dosage was at least getting smaller.

A few weeks ago, my over the counter pills ran out and I decided that I was going to fully quit the drugs. My stress levels are lower, I am eating healthier, and if an attack comes on, I find that taking charcoal pills eases the acid attack. The first couple of days were ROUGH. Going from fully reducing stomach acid to suddenly allowing it back in your system is not fun, despite the fact that I thought that I “weaned” myself from the drugs in a reasonable manner. One day while at work I tried everything to relieve the acid. I ate an apple. I ate some almonds (which I hate). I chewed some gum. I drank tons of water. Eventually, I felt a little better but it was bad enough that I almost thought about going back on the over the counter drugs again.

But, I persevered through a couple of awful days and gradually it has gotten better. I have had a few times when I have had to take two charcoal pills, but for the most part I am pretty amazed.

I take the pink pills on the bottom (FYI- I was not asked to review this product or paid to put it on my blog. Many people that have acid problems do not know about taking charcoal to relieve their problems. My doctor suggested it and it has worked out well.)

And boy am I glad that I have weaned myself off the drugs. Especially when I saw this on NPR.com today: FDA Warns About Bone Breaks and Heartburn Drugs. 1 in 20 (!!!) people use these drugs to reduce stomach acid. And the higher the dosage/ the longer you take the drugs, the higher the risk.

I may have dodged a bullet here….4 years of these drugs was quite long enough for me.