That's why paracetamol should be sold in the pharmacy by a pharmacist who asks you for what you are using that stuff and warns you about side effects.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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Seriously, read the insert. Indications, warnings, dosage, expiration date. Every single time.
... Is the expiration date that important ? I always thought the drug would just lose effectiveness but not really become dangerous
Yes, some drugs break down into other compounds that can be toxic after their expiration date.
then why to the others have it?
To prevent you from using medicine that's less effective. Doctors want your to have a certain concentration in your blood to be within the therapeutic window. If the concentration is too low you won't have the desired effect on you.
It's mostly out of caution, just as the date is shorter than it could be to be extra safe.
- don't be an idiot and 2) read the leaflet
Sounds like a messaging problem, despite the idiocy (or rather, because idiocy is the default). Like, I'm not silly enough to eat 4 boxes of paracetamol a day, but I've also read maybe 3 medication leaflets in my entire life, and I've been on literally dozens of antidepressants and antianxiety meds. I basically scan over the leaflet to see what sort of dick problems I can expect 😆
It's like the Terms of Service of an iTunes update. No cunt is reading that shit. People just know "i make click i get music", and "i swallow lump of chalk i feel better".
The leaflets aren't even written for laypeople to really understand them. Besides being in a 1pt font, they're written in something bordering on legalese but with medical terms. "Contraindications"?? The fuck am I, Beatrice Pharmacist the inventor of pharmacism? I don't blame people for getting 2 sentences in and giving up.
That said, the dosage is on the front of the box, and that should be enough for even the most imbecilic person. But if you lose the box and just have loose blister packs lying around for a year, you might go off the rails a little when the tooth pain kicks in.
It's also the case that something as "basic" as paracetamol being such a widespread and easy-to-buy medication causes a strange lack of respect for its potential danger. Like "pop a pill when you have a headache" is so second nature to us. It becomes a non-threatening intervention that only becomes less threatening the older you get, because it's just... there. So you don't even feel the need to check the leaflet for side effects and such, because it's 'part of the furniture' of our lives. This is the messaging problem I alluded to. You really gotta think about the dumbest person alive, and then aim for someone twice as dumb as that.