That wonderful and often misspelled ingredient in the tasty chemical stew of NyQuil. Pronounced Sue Doe Eff Ed Rin, this stuff is at the same time a stimulant and a decongestant. When consumed with the depressant drugs in NyQuil, a strange, sometimes hash-ish buzz is resultant.

This stimulant quality of this dope is what earns it a ban from most professional sports.

Some side effects of pseudoephedrine are as follows:
dry mouth, insomia, nervousness, nausea, loss of appetite, vertigo.

Don't take too much of this shit, I read a couple of studies that make it sound like heavy use is as bad as snorting coke:
"Pseudoephedrine, like other central nervous system stimulants, has been abused. At high doses subjects commonly experience an elevation of mood, a sense of increased energy and alertness, and decreased appetite. Some individuals become anxious, irritable, and loquacious. In addition to the marked euphoria the user experiences a sense of markedly enhanced physical strength and mental capacity. With continued use, tolerance develops, the user increases the dose, and toxic signs and symptoms appear. Depression may follow rapid withdrawal."

so take it easy on this shit

Another word to the wise regarding this drug:
Do not snort pseudoephedrine!

I can tell you, from personal experience, (hey weren't we all 16 once?) that if you try snorting this drug, it WILL feel like you've just jammed a freshly made batch of plaster up your nostril. It will sit there and harden, and the rest will drip down the back of your throat. Personally, I vomitted profusely at that point, when the dripping began, but then I'd been drinking plastic-bottle vodka all night and chain-smoking clove cigarettes. Neither of which I advise doing, as well. And yes, you will develop a tolerance to pseudoephedrine, whether you swallow or snort it, and you will need to do more at some point. The addiction is much like a cocaine addiction, in that the addicted may swear up and down they're not addicted (even though they'd sell their record collection for more, er...or so I've read), despite the fact that there is a definate withdrawal you go through. It's not quite as nasty as heroin withdrawal, but it's no walk in the park, either.

Bottom line - use this drug for its' intended purposes, such as to treat asthma, and stick to the real drugs if you want to get high; they're much more expensive, and if you're a poor student like I was, it's neigh impossible to afford a seriously debilitating coke habit, while it' s dangerously easy to develop a pseudoephedrine habit (it's available in 24-hour supermarkets!). Not that I'm condoning cocaine addiction...but I think you get the gist of what I'm saying.

I had my first experience with pseudoephedrine last night. Really. I came back from the airport with a really bad cold, but I had to go meet someone for a business meeting, even as wiped out as I was. My girlfriend thought it would make me feel better to take some Sudafed. I've never taken the stuff before, and normally I'm stubbornly resistant to taking any sort of drug at all - even prescription drugs, much less over-the-counter ones. For some reason (blame it on being so sick) I took the horsepill, and went on my merry way.

Well, it didn't seem to do much - I was still sniffling and stuffed to the gills, and exhausted beyond belief throughout the entire meeting, so after I got home, I decided to go to bed a little earlier than usual. Not much, just a little - a half hour or so.

That was 11:00pm.

1:00 am rolls around and suddenly I was completely awake. No grogginess, no slowly coming up from a dream state. One moment I was unconscious, the next, my eyes were wide open and my heart was racing like I'd had a nightmare - but I didn't remember anything like that. I tried to lay back and calm down, but nothing doing, so I got up and surfed for a while, hoping that the strain on my eyes and boredom in my brain would eventually restore my sleep to me.

Four hours later, I finally yawned. When I realized how much time had passed, I was more than a little upset. Some of us have to get up early and work - and I was going to be a zombie all day long.

Thank you, Sudafed - never again!

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