Theraflu: "Why hast thou forsaken me?!"

Before we get started, let's just get that little immature impulse recognized and out of the way. Forsaken...Foreskin...hardy har har. Do we feel better? Can we move on now? Okay, let's do!

Theraflu has been the center of my cold fighting regimen for years. For whatever reason, I am a DIE HARD fan of the kind that you dissolve in hot water. You know the kind, right? The kind that tastes like a drug addict's piss. The kind that looks as though it is going to taste like warm and comforting chicken broth. The kind that tastes like crushed up Tylenol with a hit of Aspartame. The kind that makes you THANKFUL that your nose is stuffed up and you can't taste a damn thing any way. Yes...THAT kind of Theraflu. In all of the years that I worked at the coffee shop, I was constantly exposed to sick people in search of that Antioxidant Tea that everyone was talking about on Talk Radio that morning. I was handling their money that they had apparently used to wipe their noses and then their asses. I was forever sick and ill and hating life while simultaneously working a job that made no time for sick people. I used to rise at the LOVELY hour of 5:15am just so I could be at work to open the store at 6am.

How in the name of all that is unholy did I manage this with a head cold that appeared at least once a month for three years? THERAFLU is the answer, my friends. THERAFLU is my savior! Not only does Theraflu block symptoms from even appearing on a tough cold...it blocks them for at LEAST eight hours, long enough for any shift at a coffee shop. Yet even BETTER than all that, the pseudoephedrine (nasal decongestant) mixed with a little caffeine made me insanely hyper and plain slap happy. It was a brilliant mixer to my morning coffee...in that I consumed the Theraflu and then gulped down gallons of coffee as a chaser.

Which brings me to the point of this little entry here. Pseudoephedrine, my favorite little nasal decongestant and also happy little OTC stimulant, is quite legal in all 50 of our wonderful states. Many of them, including my native Georgia allow unfettered sale of products containing pseudoephedrine. Ah, pseudoephedrine, one of the most sought after ingredients of the oft criticized methamphetamine, also known to many as Crystal Meth, Meth, Tina, Ice, Crank, etc. Please note that the picture above is a time lapse of mug shots over 8 years chronicling the degeneration of a human being, apparently addicted to Crystal Meth...not Crystal Light! Not Crystal Gale! Not Pseudoephederine! Not Theraflu! BUT Crystal Meth. So, our little cracked out darling is probably dead now. As you can see the last mug shot was taken in '88 or so...she would seem a pioneer of the meth addiction actually as I didn't even hear of the drug until MANY years later. In any case, I was ignorant to many of the laws surrounding the ingredients of crystal meth. While there doesn't seem to be any regulation around bath tubs or trailer parks, there are regulations in many states surrounding the sale of certain over the counter medications. Georgia has no such laws. Georgia, my sweet home for 27 years, does not HAVE any laws about pseudoephedrine, but you sure as FUCK can't buy alcohol on Sunday.

Now, dear, sweet LIBERAL California is a different story. I have come to discover that the more liberal the state, the more rules in place to ensure freedoms...seems a little oxymoronical [sic] to me. In any case, California, along with Alabama, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, and Washington have laws which require pharmacies to sell pseudoephedrine behind-the-counter and to collect personal information from the purchaser. I had been in Calfornia all of two months when WHAM!, George Michael popped out and offered a blow job at Walgreens. Oops...wait...no...WHAM! I got a head cold. So, following my well established plan of attack, I headed to the nearest drug store to stock up on my depleted stores of Theraflu. I looked. I scoured. I peaked. I pondered. I surveyed. I rummaged. I inspected. I searched. But I did NOT find my precious Theraflu. Until some news ticker of the past floated up and scurried across the bottom of my vision: "States to begin regulated the sale of products containing pseudoephedrine."

Damn IT! So I had to go to the pharmacy counter, wait in line, show my ID only to discover that they were OUT of my precious Theraflu and only had some knockoff Walgreens, generic bullshit: WalFlu, I think they called it. I was NOT about to deal with anything called WalFlu nor was I at all amused by my adventure. SO I went to another Walgreens only to go through the same shenanigans with the same result: generic bullshit named WalFlu. Now, I don't think Hill Billy BILLY Bob ol' Boy is marching into Walgreens and purchasing 100 boxes of Sudafed to make his meth lab explode with the beautiful shards of the sleepless Devil. No! Billy Bob ol' Boy probably has another source lined up all together. In fact, I would venture a guess that Billy Bob ol' Boy has an addicted client who works as a pharmacists and who pays him with pseudoephedrine. But that's not why we have laws my friends...no no...our laws are not in place to curtail problems...they are in place to make us think that problems are being addressed by directly affecting our daily lives. Crystal Meth is a problem that we hear about on the news...and well damnit the only way most of any of us are affected is by this extra step in the way we deal with treating our cold symptoms...and yet people in the picture above keep showing up in our jails. In America, we don't deal with problems...we just talk about them and do things to make them worse. I want my Theraflu back. I have Social Anxiety Disorder and can barely stand to talk to strangers. Going into a Walgreen's is enough, but now I have to go and ASK someone about a controlled substance. They're going to look at me funny and judge me and hate me and call the police on me. I just want to treat my cold. Now I just have to sniffle in misery...I can't even snort my Crystal Meth today because my nose is all stuffed up! DAMN IT!