Not even a sip for me. I was offered small amounts of champagne or wine at special occasions, but I never drank any because I could smell the alcohol on it and didn’t want to.

I’ve just always been some variant of the “mom friend” and after I turned 21, I was still the DD most of the time.

Nope. The first time I drank any alcohol ever was on my 21st birthday. My Dad made me a gin and tonic with Bombay Sapphire, and that set the standard for the kind of alcohol I will drink. It’s a good thing I’m a lightweight because I only drink the expensive stuff. (The cheap crap burns too much.)

I’ve tried to drink coffee a couple times. I never was successful at it. My body just hates something in coffee and it just comes right back up before even hitting my stomach. So, I guess it’s gone down my esophagus, but never further than that.

I end up going to the ER way more than I want to. It’s really annoying; if you walk into an urgent care or a regular doctor’s office (besides my regular care providers, they’re used to me now) and say you think you have a kidney infection or other kidney problems and you just need antibiotics, they just go “NOPE” and yeet you out the door to go to the ER. So far, I have been successful in preventing them from calling an ambulance for me.

Never have I ever drank alcohol illegally or underage.

As an absurdly fervent Tolkien fan, people bringing up the Eagles spikes my blood pressure in a way that cannot be good in the long run.

I’m so sad that Kamala stole our governor. He’s going to be really good for the country as a whole, but he was ours!

Biden absolutely has some control over this, but Netanyahu is the bigger problem at the moment. Biden has influence over Netanyahu (with a lot of caveats and red tape due to decades of foreign policy), and Harris has influence over Biden…but that’s not the same thing as absolute control. There are also parts of this that have to get approved by congress and there’s only so much the office of the president can do unilaterally.

They can be doing more, and they should be doing more, but Harris’ role and capability is limited to that of an advisor (under strict scrutiny from everyone) right now, and that doesn’t actually give her that much power.

I’m not terribly old, but I’ve been around long enough to know that the lower offices are where you actually affect change in this country. The higher the office, the less they listen to their constituents.

There are lower ranking Democrats that are espousing the right ideas about things like the filibuster, gerrymandering, and even some that are agitating about the electoral college BS. The best strategy I see right now is to clear as many Republicans out of office as we can, and support the newer, lower-level representatives that are aiming to affect real change.

My voting strategy has always been to “vote blue, no matter who” on the top of the ticket, then do my research and be more selective about the offices lower down, especially in the primaries. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if more progressive candidates take hold of the House and the Senate if everything they pass just gets vetoed by the fascist in the Oval Office anyways.

You do realize that she’s the Vice President and doesn’t actually have any authority or power unless Biden kicks the bucket, right?

Because it really seems like you think that she has any ability to make unilateral decisions or enact her policy platform right this second, and that simply isn’t the case.

America is, unfortunately, a two party system. If not enough people vote for Harris, Trump wins. Period. There are no options besides Harris and Trump, and only one of them has talked about how Israel should literally nuke Gaza (I’ll let you take a guess on which one it was.)

I see your idealism, and I agree that any amount of genocide is unacceptable, but letting Trump win will just accelerate the genocide in Gaza, expand it to the West Bank (more noticeably, anyways), and likely start new genocides here in America. I’ve been writing to my representatives and sending them articles about the atrocities being committed by the IDF and imploring them to do something about it…but I’m not dumb enough to withhold my vote from the Centrists and allow the Fascists to take over.

I repeat: withholding your vote from Harris is effectively a vote for Trump because America is a two party system, and there’s only two options to pick from.

Yeah, caffeine is a good vasoconstrictor, so it can help with headaches that are not from something like high blood pressure. Paracetamol/acetaminophen is really good for headaches on its own because it gets into the brain better.

I was following along with some of your other comments and whatnot, but this diatribe tells me a lot about your intentions behind this post.

I have ADHD, and I’m a medical student. I suppose in your mind that makes me one of the “dumbest motherfuckers” in training, but I will speak from the education and authority that I do have. There are many health conditions and comorbidities that can make stimulants a bigger risk than they’re worth. Personally, I have idiopathic sinus tachycardia, so my psychiatrist had me get a consultation with Cardiology before she would prescribe a stimulant because one of the major risks of stimulant medications is Sudden Cardiac Death Syndrome (which is exactly what it sounds like) and if you have a high heart rate or other cardiac or electrophysiological abnormalities, it drastically increases your risk.

I get that getting by without medication is extremely difficult for some people. I had to do my first semester of medical school on hard mode while I got my official diagnosis and medical clearance for treatment sorted out. Healthcare access, particularly mental healthcare access in America (and pretty much everywhere else for mental health) is criminally abysmal, but that is not an excuse to encourage people to ignore medical advice and consensus regarding medication safety.

(And as a side note: Surgeons are really good…at anatomy. Most of the surgeons I have worked with would really prefer it if the primary care/family med/internal med/literally-anyone-else doctors did the pre- and post-op medication management. Anesthesiologists are the ones that are intimately acquainted with pharmacology when considering physicians in the OR)

Alternating the paracetamol and ibuprofen on a schedule is the best recommendation I can give. Severe pain, especially post-operative pain, is best managed by taking the pain meds before the pain sets in. The ibuprofen is also an NSAID and the swelling and inflammation are big contributors to pain.

The schedule that I always recommend is:

• 0800: 650-1000mg paracetamol (acetaminophen)
• 1200: 600-800mg ibuprofen
• 1600: 650-1000mg paracetamol (acetaminophen)
• 2000: 600-800mg ibuprofen
• (and in the first day or two after surgery, set alarms to wake up and take pain meds at 0000 and 0400 on the same pattern if the pain is really bad.)

This pattern keeps you covered on pain control, and you can shorten the intervals to every 3 hours if this isn’t enough without exceeding daily dose limits on either medication. If you are an American reading this and you’re also taking something like Norco, make sure to account for the acetaminophen/tylenol/paracetamol that’s in those because exceeding the recommended dose on that one is bad news for your liver.

Like some other folks have said, warm saline (salt water) rinses and soft or liquid foods are going to help as well.

I’m repeating my reply to someone else in the thread so hopefully more people can see it:

I looked it up and read through the NIH paper that did a review of available information about it. It’s essentially a recreational drug that can be formed in your body when you take methylphenidate and alcohol at the same time.

I will put out this caution though: there were a lot of reports of bad trips, worsened focus/cognition, dangerous side effects like increased heart rate and body temperature, and there was a very high rate of addictive responses. So it may sound like fun, but you’re running the risk of causing yourself a lot of problems and using Ethylphenidate (or methylphenidate plus alcohol) may make your regular ADHD meds less effective and lead into addiction problems.

TL;DR: This is a dangerous, bad idea and as a medical student with a decent understanding of pharmacology, I do NOT recommend doing this.

I looked it up and read through the NIH paper that did a review of available information about it. It’s essentially a recreational drug that can be formed in your body when you take methylphenidate and alcohol at the same time.

I will put out this caution though: there were a lot of reports of bad trips, worsened focus/cognition, dangerous side effects like increased heart rate and body temperature, and there was a very high rate of addictive responses. So it may sound like fun, but you’re running the risk of causing yourself a lot of problems and using Ethylphenidate (or methylphenidate plus alcohol) may make your regular ADHD meds less effective and lead into addiction problems.

Especially after Trump’s antivax BS during COVID.

I’ve heard the neonatologists say that they make the parents repeat back, write down, and sign a consent form that says “I understand that refusing the vitamin K shot significantly increases the chances of bleeding, including brain bleeds that can lead to significant disability or death.”

Not many people seem to want to sign that form for some reason.