Im not sure it has anything to do with flavor and has more to do with Change not being easy for her to accept. She grew up drinking Sprite because that was the soda they sold in her town, so she drinks Sprite, anything else would feel like a Betrayal or just wrong. Routine tends to be a big thing for a lot of people with Autism like Joyce (and myself), any change from that Routine (be it major change or simply changing a brand of food they are eating) can be upsetting or even cause a panic attack.
I have a really weak sense of smell/taste, and I don’t drink soda, but the seltzer flavours are still all significant to me. One time my father-in-law accidentally got toasted coconut seltzer (which tastes weird enough to begin with) and mixed it with cherry. It was definitely a flavor.
. . .Would that work? Like because it’s pill form I would imagine that you would need to take the pills all at once, or halved, in a . . .solid thing that will dissolve over time in your system.
If dissolved in a soda wouldn’t that. . . diffuse and or make it inert?
The dilution shouldn’t be a problem. Pills are small so we can swallow them and because they’re shelf stable longer. This would be bad to do with a slow release medication, since you’d get it all at once. There’s also a chance that the beverage could react with the pill.
It absolutely can, but more likely with capsules. Whether or not it’s the case here (the leaflet in the box should say) someone should really tell Joyce that it can be an issue and she needs to be careful.
Quick Goggle says it’s fine other than soda is bad for you nutritionally
Also, retired pharmacologist father assures me drug interactions are rare, so unless it specifically says otherwise on the label, it’s basically ok to take with anything
I knew the water trick would work, except with Sprite I guess. Man I remember being able to down multiple liters a of soda day. Good thing Joyce is still young. That’ll catch up to ya.
My sister has to use soda/bubbly drinks to get her pills down. It’s the carbonation. Stops her from feeling it, helps her swallow. Personally I just dry swallow pills and then drink water after to make sure my throat won’t be scratched.
We did not! If anything, I think most people who thought about it just assumed that it was probably “Nicole” since that’s what it was in the other universe. Evidently this is not the case here.
Only custom, I think. However, in some families, if your mother calls you by your full name it means “you are in big trouble now.”
(Now I am remembering a Phillipine exchange student in high school who had so many names that by the time you spoke them all you could have forgotten why you were addressing him.)
(For the purposes of this comment, I will assume you are being sincere.)
Grapefruit soda is off the table, too. Grapefruit juice can react with certain medications to blunt or completely neutralize their effectiveness, and most grapefruit soda contains grapefruit juice.
Source: my mother is specifically forbidden from consuming ANY grapefruit products due to her medication.
I worry that’s not an effective long term solution but the past 12 hours have been the most Joyce has smiled all in-universe week so we’re gonna let her have this one for a bit.
I actually did an anxiety outpatient program to help with swallowing pills, which taught me to practice with tic tacs and it worked. …but I have since backslid and now I have problem even swallowing liquids if there’s also a pill in my mouth.
When I was a kid, I practiced by swallowing grapes whole. After that, pills weren’t nothin.
I never got used to the ‘washing the pill down’ thing – that always made me choke. Better to take a drink for moisture, then take the pill ‘dry’, swallow it, and then take a drink afterwards to remove any taste/residue and to ensure the pill went all the way down.
I’m a massive swallower when it comes to fruit stones, i will cheerfully gulp down cherry and olive pits, apricot stones even. Also a habit i picked up as a child for whatever reason. However i still very much have a gag reflex. Sadly.
Likewise. I was chronically ill with brittle asthma as a kid so I got a lot of practice. I started swallowing pills at 4 because one of the meds they had me on didn’t come in liquid form, about a year later I decided I preferred it that way because by then I associated banana flavor with feeling sick. So from 5 on I took all my meds in pill form.
Super glad my asthma got less severe as I got older.
Have you tried holding the liquid in your mouth first and dropping the pill into it and swallowing instead of having the pill in your mouth then taking the drink?
Is it a type of pill that still works the same if you sprinkle it over applesauce? (Sometimes it says so on the label; otherwise your pharmacist should know.)
As someone who had this problem growing up, and then the first time I had a cold in college, took about 5 minutes and some near-gagging to get a Sudafed down, I feel your pain.
What works for me now:
– Pop pill in mouth, near the front. Not too far back or that’s more likely to trigger my gag reflex.
– Take a swig of water, not too much.
– Swallow the whole thing like you’re just drinking water. (Easier with smaller pills, of course.)
– Drink more to wash it down, if needed.
I broke my leg when I was almost 13 and was being given little cups of tablets to swallow at a time. So went from choking down/spitting out/gagging while swallowing paracetamol to managing to knock them back simply coz of the volume of practice I was getting…
My current technique is: prep glass of water. Load front of tongue with pills then quickly flip-launch pills towards throat whilst grabbing the glass then chugging. I’m swallowing taking 9 tablets of an evening presently.
Yeah, swallowing pills isn’t something I would typically associate with getting easier with practice, but my forever quest to find the right combination of meds for my various conditions has led to me being able to swallow quite large capsules with little issue now.
I mean literally pop the pill in. Hold it in the palm of your hand, take some water, then tilt your head back and slap your open mouth with the hand that has the pill on it. Don’t hold the pill in your fingers and place it in your mouth, that’s too deliberate. You’re trying to get it done and over with before the other half of your brain freaks out.
I am on So Many Pills since the wreck and getting old. Seriously my bedtime meds have like 5 pills to swallow whole, and one that has to dissolve. Part of the problem is because of how much I weigh I have to take a lot of some of the meds, and they don’t make the pills that high of dosage. But for me it’s never been an issue even swallowing the big capsules, just throw ’em all in my mouth and wash them down with a drinkable liquid. I think my record is 12 or 14 pills covering 4 meds, but that was a long time ago.
I agree that Joyce needs help but more importantly, I need some m&m minis in my life. I live in the middle of nowhere, so our stores don’t seem to carry them.
So if Jennifer suggests Joyce cuts back on the amount of Sprite (hopefully its diet sprite) she uses for the pills over time to a reasonable amount then this storyline is over and we can go back to Jo-Joe storylines?
I’m glad Joyce found a solution but she should ask her pharmacist if these are the types of pills that can/should be dissolved in water (or carbonated sugary soda) and still maintain their effectiveness
In real life I agree. However this is the same universe as Integrivact, the antidepressant that works in like two days flat, so I figure they have slightly different meds that will best fit what’s interesting for us to see. : )
Wait, is homeopathy not the one where idiots put a tiny pill in a massive jug of water and swear it’s more effective? I was trying to play off the 2-liter bottle angle but I can never remember the word for the scam I’m thinking of and homeopathy came up when I searched for it. Hard to Google a word ya can’t remember, sometimes. Sorry if I said something rude there.
Yes, that’s the one. Yeah, I doubt “water which has, at the most charitable, the memory of something which is supposedly medicinal” would cause sterilization, but then again, DO may have been referring to how unregulated a lot of questionable supplements can be. But, if a supplement was actually created in accordance with the (BS) principles of homeopathy,
Homeopathy: even a lot of people who might otherwise be open to alternative treatments / woo think it’s BS.
I believe it was Terry Pratchett who said that if you really believe water contains the memory of things that have been in it, and you think about this for more than five seconds, you will never drink water again.
You’re basically right, except that you’ve got the scale wrong.
Proper dilution in homeopathy might involve dissolving the pill in the bottle, then dumping it out and filling it with soda again.
Then you’d drink a teaspoonful as your medication.
For all practical purposes, homeopathic remedies are water. Which does at the least make them less dangerous.
I kinda feel like regular M&Ms would have been the natural level up from mini M&Ms, instead of going straight to peanut M&Ms. Peanut M&Ms ARE the best M&Ms, though, so I can understand Joyce here. (You know what’s the very best M&M, though? A peanut M&M with *no peanut in it*. I cannot explain this. It’s just a special kind of magic that no ordinary M&M can deliver.)
Also! I’m so proud of Joyce! Yeah she does still need some assist on this, but she is TRYING and she is DIYing. Good for her!
Joyce has a history of having issues consuming food items, combined with her reticence to even get her pills in the first place. Given she downed a months worth of sugar to take just one pill, she clearly *is* still having issues with it.
With Becky in particular there’s a possessive streak where she wants to be the most involved in every aspect of Joyce’s life ( like when they were kids) and Dorothy has been going along with Becky’s rivalry for Joyce’s attention lately along with her own tendency to try to fix her friends. I would say there is definatly some desire to keep Joyce as the dependent friend they are used to helping.
Roz covered it in her brief appearance in this storyline. Consistency’s actually really important in birth control. Maybe it’ll be less important for the sake of regulating her hormones, but for actual birth control, the difference in effectiveness between consistently timed pill use versus erratic is actually significant.
Which is all to say, Joyce’s usual hangups could cause her actual harm here if she needs the pill to work and it just does not function as she expects it to, so she needs to work through this.
Joyce doesn’t need the pill to work for her intended use ( pain reduction) straight away and she has just indicated sucess with taking her first one by herself so it’s a little early to call her schedule erratic.
Weren’t people jabbering about how it was 3,000,00% vital for Joyce to take the placebos right now now now now now, or else she’d be Lost Forever to the blackened tides of Hussypill Purgatory? I swear there was a whole “discussion” over how Joyce had this mystical window of opportunity with some placebos that was vital to her real pills’ effectiveness.
The month’s worth of pills are each a different dose, and need to be synchronized with the patient’s natural hormone levels or they won’t work as well as they should. And I can see how suddenly jumping to a high dose in the middle of the sequence could be bad too. So, yes, you do have to start at a particular place in the sequence at a particular time in your cycle, or wait til the next period. Consider that it isn’t going to help until the next period (or two) after you start, and there are strong reasons to start when the doctor tells you to.
Granted: you may have strong reasons not to start right this second but it’s worth comparing the costs.
Okay but the dose on a placebo is nothing, that’s the entire point of a placebo. The current cost is nothing. Whatever level the real pills are at, that’s the dose that actually matters, because it’s an actual dose. She may as well be taking Mike & Ikes at this particular stage. I’m not talking about the actual pills, those were allegedly meant to come later anyway. Damn.
pla·ce·bo
/pləˈsēbō/
noun
a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.
a substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs.
In other words, not as urgent as everyone is pretending. I don’t care how helpful the real pills are, it’s explicitly not what she’s meant to be taking right now. Mike. And. Ikes.
Roz has nothing to do with this, unless Becky or Dorothy ropes her in as well. Joyce has never demonstrated that she needs four people to help her take her meds. What, are they gonna surround her at all times squawking “PILLS PILLS PILLS” for an indeterminate amount of time until they decide she can handle her own mouth? What’s the benefit of having so many people constantly badgering her about this, aside from annoying her into doing some “hide the pill so dum dum doesn’t know it’s medicine” bullshit? Why can’t it just be on her terms instead of every single person she’s ever met going in on her, is what I’m asking.
Maybe I’m the weird one for it, but the way everyone is approaching this would be extremely overwhelming and stressful.
It’s not just you, I’d have gone into shutdown immediately after it started. No one would get any response out of me until the harassed feeling went away.
There isn’t one. Going by the outdated and rudimentary binary sex system, “males” don’t have the equipment for menstruation. There’s really nothing even similar for most folks born with the ol’ twig and berries, because we don’t have the organ that stores babies in it for the winter, so none of those processes really apply.
Maybe that’s an irreverent way of putting it, but oh well.
Testosterone salve for HRT for meds that deplete the hormone as a side-effect. I was on spiro for my blood pressure for about 6 months and I was prescribed the testosterone creme after a couple of months, continued for like 4 or 5 months after I was taken off the spiro. I was testing another med for interaction with spiro, and it did, they took me of both as soon as interactions were verified. I think they were testing some cholesterol drug for people who couldn’t take statins or high doses of B12.
The ‘swallow’ reflex is involuntary and is hard-wired into us. I seriously cannot visualize someone who has that much resistance to taking a pill — even one of THOSE kind of pills — that they need to practice with M&Ms.
Very realistic. The first time I remember taking antibiotics in pill form (small), I coughed them back out all the way across the pharmacy, and I was already a teenager. I had trouble with even relatively small pills until I was almost 18.
By now I can swallow even pretty large pills, but that took a lot of practice. I have a really strong gag reflex, and I’m sure that’s a factor.
The only thing that’s a bit unrealistic is that birth control is very small, so you definitely wouldn’t need peanut M&Ms to practise.
I assume “regular style” means biting it in half without going through the peanut, eating that half of the chocolate, then eating the peanut, then eating the rest of the chocolate.
So while I am here and can actually comment, all she needs to do is fill that bottle up with water each day. That way her mind still says “Sprite” and off she goes! At least that is often how my own autistic brain functions.
If the pills dissolve before they hit your stomach, it can be a problem, but i’m reasonably sure that they should get there like, essentially instantly and probably it’ll work out in that case.
At the very least, i’ve taken A Lot of my estrogen pills with soda just because it was the drink i’ve had on hand and they definitley were working
Pills (and tablets and liquids like cough medicine) are formulated for different kinds of release (quick/immediate, or gradual throughout the day, or delayed release, etc), so it can make a difference, especially if you need the medication to stay in your system longer
IDK, maybe she can slip the pill into a handful of peanut m&ms in the future. It might work if she can tolerate the knowledge that one of the items is not like the others.
Jennifer is right, but that’s still a huge achievement made to Joyce all by herself. Knowing that Joe likes her is definitely motivating Joyce to change more and more.
Yeah! So proud. Sure, she has trouble with these thing, but SHE DID IT! Before anyone needed to say anything too! Luckily the pills aren’t legit yet I believe, so she can practice until the real thing. Win win win!
No, it depends on how practiced a pill taker you are. There is actual medication that size and bigger. I think I could do it by now (with water, not dry), but it wouldn’t be pleasant.
But its extremely weird in this context, because every birth control pill I’ve ever seen is actually very small. That doesn’t mean it’s not still really hard to take if you aren’t used to it, but small M&Ms to practise would be totally adequate.
When I was younger I is when I eat food normally there are pieces I swallow bigger than pills. So I might try to replicate that.
One thing I might do is grab a bag of peanut M&Ms put the pill in my mouth grab a handfull of M&Ms chew them and then try to swallow the pill with them.
Before that I would just chew the pills chewable or not.
I wonder if it’s a confidence thing. If her time with Joe made her feel that she might be weird, but she’s not a weirdo. She’s not defined by being abnormal. She can do the things that anyone else can. Even if it takes some help.
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to be fair, drinking a bunch first thing in the morning is supposed to be a good way to wake-up
*looks at empty bottle of Scotch* Can confirm
oh, you sly sk8r grrrl … Seconded …
You may have issues
Yeah, the issue is that they’re out of Scotch.
Technically speaking, alcohol is a solution!
So is drinking a bunch just before going to bed. :-/
Y’all are DORKS
If Joyce is gonna start every day chugging a 2-liter, she’s going to be giving Walky a run for his money diet-wise.
Joyce and Walky do share the same aspirations for the future.
Maybe she can transition to sparkling flavored water. Im just glad Joyce is getting to trial and error what works best on her own terms.
Joyce is very picky. I recall a strip where she was upset she got Sierra Mist or 7-Up instead of Sprite.
Doubt she’d be a fan of “battery acid stored downwind from a lime” flavor.
Im not sure it has anything to do with flavor and has more to do with Change not being easy for her to accept. She grew up drinking Sprite because that was the soda they sold in her town, so she drinks Sprite, anything else would feel like a Betrayal or just wrong. Routine tends to be a big thing for a lot of people with Autism like Joyce (and myself), any change from that Routine (be it major change or simply changing a brand of food they are eating) can be upsetting or even cause a panic attack.
Instead of liquid diabetes? I don’t think flavour wars over sparkling beverages have a lot of high-ground.
Is a “high-ground” even required? It’s all just fizzy stuff with different flavors, why can’t people just prefer certain flavors over others?
Also the lime is hidden under a pile of sawdust, for that authentic sparkling water flavor.
It’s like regular water, but angry!
I swear they only “flavor” that stuff with the power of suggestion. “There are lemons and limes on the bottle, therefore this must be lemon-lime.”
Nah, it’s the aftertaste!
I have a really weak sense of smell/taste, and I don’t drink soda, but the seltzer flavours are still all significant to me. One time my father-in-law accidentally got toasted coconut seltzer (which tastes weird enough to begin with) and mixed it with cherry. It was definitely a flavor.
Do have a look, how much sugar is in flavored water. Compared to Sprite it’s only the 10 inch chocolate Santa, not the 12 inch one.
Okay, so that’s 2 whole inches less of chocolate Santa.
Well, sure, but I’m not sure birth control pills are actually effective if you dissolve them in soda first… at minimum it would probably affect dosing
Amazed she kept up the smile through all of this instead of shifting to a minor freakout face. She’s REALLY happy about Joe, huh.
That explains her chippy mood… <abbr title="They come in BAGS?! What about the TUBES?!"Sugar
HANNAH
HANNAH BROWN
Well I need sugar.
I thought her middle name was still Nicole.
Joyce Nicole Brown is the old person. This new person is Joyce Hannah Brown.
*Tilts head*
. . .Would that work? Like because it’s pill form I would imagine that you would need to take the pills all at once, or halved, in a . . .solid thing that will dissolve over time in your system.
If dissolved in a soda wouldn’t that. . . diffuse and or make it inert?
Depends entirely on the pill. I have no idea about birth control specifically but I do know some gel caps don’t dissolve in certain liquids.
this sounds dangerously close to organic chemistry
Is.
The dilution shouldn’t be a problem. Pills are small so we can swallow them and because they’re shelf stable longer. This would be bad to do with a slow release medication, since you’d get it all at once. There’s also a chance that the beverage could react with the pill.
It absolutely can, but more likely with capsules. Whether or not it’s the case here (the leaflet in the box should say) someone should really tell Joyce that it can be an issue and she needs to be careful.
Quick Goggle says it’s fine other than soda is bad for you nutritionally
Also, retired pharmacologist father assures me drug interactions are rare, so unless it specifically says otherwise on the label, it’s basically ok to take with anything
I knew the water trick would work, except with Sprite I guess. Man I remember being able to down multiple liters a of soda day. Good thing Joyce is still young. That’ll catch up to ya.
I use the water trick with my kids all the time. Of course, that’s with liquid medicine, but still.
My sister has to use soda/bubbly drinks to get her pills down. It’s the carbonation. Stops her from feeling it, helps her swallow. Personally I just dry swallow pills and then drink water after to make sure my throat won’t be scratched.
Ohh, is someone trying to be a better person for Joe?
Please don’t be booster again
rip
Press F to pay respects.
I think you need to change your email, not your name.
Yes. There’s a full write-up on Grav Roulette on Walkypedia.
sorry, more booster
Did we know her middle name was Hannah?
Yeah did we? 🤔
We did not! If anything, I think most people who thought about it just assumed that it was probably “Nicole” since that’s what it was in the other universe. Evidently this is not the case here.
I was under the impression it was Nicole.
I guess if Ruth and Dina can change their names, Joyce can too.
I’ve believed nobody have a middle name in USA. Or, at least, nobody tell it, because some good reason.
Only custom, I think. However, in some families, if your mother calls you by your full name it means “you are in big trouble now.”
(Now I am remembering a Phillipine exchange student in high school who had so many names that by the time you spoke them all you could have forgotten why you were addressing him.)
Many people do, but not everyone. I don’t, nor does my sister.
Is there any chance her approach will interfere with the effective functioning of the drug she’s taking?
Yes. There is a chance. I don’t know how high it is, but there is a chance.
highly improbable though
On a scale of bad things to wash your pills down with Sprite I assume isn’t the best but it’s probably not the worst either.
Better than Coke or Pepsi or grapefruit juice. Worse than water or most other juices.
What about grapefruit soda?
(For the purposes of this comment, I will assume you are being sincere.)
Grapefruit soda is off the table, too. Grapefruit juice can react with certain medications to blunt or completely neutralize their effectiveness, and most grapefruit soda contains grapefruit juice.
Source: my mother is specifically forbidden from consuming ANY grapefruit products due to her medication.
Obey Your Thirst!
I worry that’s not an effective long term solution but the past 12 hours have been the most Joyce has smiled all in-universe week so we’re gonna let her have this one for a bit.
Oh man, I can’t even imagine drinking 2 liters of Sprite in one sitting now.
yea…2 liters of anything in one sitting is beyond me anymore.
I actually did an anxiety outpatient program to help with swallowing pills, which taught me to practice with tic tacs and it worked. …but I have since backslid and now I have problem even swallowing liquids if there’s also a pill in my mouth.
Anyone got any advice?
take it with some peanutbutter? just a little, so no chew, but brain thinks FOOD instead of pill
When I was a kid, I practiced by swallowing grapes whole. After that, pills weren’t nothin.
I never got used to the ‘washing the pill down’ thing – that always made me choke. Better to take a drink for moisture, then take the pill ‘dry’, swallow it, and then take a drink afterwards to remove any taste/residue and to ensure the pill went all the way down.
… and now, that moment of reflection when you realize that swallowing whole grapes may be when/how you lost your gag reflex.
Is it possible to learn this power?
I’m a massive swallower when it comes to fruit stones, i will cheerfully gulp down cherry and olive pits, apricot stones even. Also a habit i picked up as a child for whatever reason. However i still very much have a gag reflex. Sadly.
I just want to say that I’m capable of easily swallowing upwards of four pills at once without any water.
We are not alone.
Likewise. I was chronically ill with brittle asthma as a kid so I got a lot of practice. I started swallowing pills at 4 because one of the meds they had me on didn’t come in liquid form, about a year later I decided I preferred it that way because by then I associated banana flavor with feeling sick. So from 5 on I took all my meds in pill form.
Super glad my asthma got less severe as I got older.
Have you tried holding the liquid in your mouth first and dropping the pill into it and swallowing instead of having the pill in your mouth then taking the drink?
That’s exaclty what I do, to avoid the pill sticking to my tongue and leaving its nasty taste behind.
Is it a type of pill that still works the same if you sprinkle it over applesauce? (Sometimes it says so on the label; otherwise your pharmacist should know.)
As someone who had this problem growing up, and then the first time I had a cold in college, took about 5 minutes and some near-gagging to get a Sudafed down, I feel your pain.
What works for me now:
– Pop pill in mouth, near the front. Not too far back or that’s more likely to trigger my gag reflex.
– Take a swig of water, not too much.
– Swallow the whole thing like you’re just drinking water. (Easier with smaller pills, of course.)
– Drink more to wash it down, if needed.
Good luck!
I broke my leg when I was almost 13 and was being given little cups of tablets to swallow at a time. So went from choking down/spitting out/gagging while swallowing paracetamol to managing to knock them back simply coz of the volume of practice I was getting…
My current technique is: prep glass of water. Load front of tongue with pills then quickly flip-launch pills towards throat whilst grabbing the glass then chugging. I’m swallowing taking 9 tablets of an evening presently.
Yeah, swallowing pills isn’t something I would typically associate with getting easier with practice, but my forever quest to find the right combination of meds for my various conditions has led to me being able to swallow quite large capsules with little issue now.
Swig of water, pop the pill in, swig of water, gulp the whole mouthful down before it has time to register.
I mean literally pop the pill in. Hold it in the palm of your hand, take some water, then tilt your head back and slap your open mouth with the hand that has the pill on it. Don’t hold the pill in your fingers and place it in your mouth, that’s too deliberate. You’re trying to get it done and over with before the other half of your brain freaks out.
I am on So Many Pills since the wreck and getting old. Seriously my bedtime meds have like 5 pills to swallow whole, and one that has to dissolve. Part of the problem is because of how much I weigh I have to take a lot of some of the meds, and they don’t make the pills that high of dosage. But for me it’s never been an issue even swallowing the big capsules, just throw ’em all in my mouth and wash them down with a drinkable liquid. I think my record is 12 or 14 pills covering 4 meds, but that was a long time ago.
I agree that Joyce needs help but more importantly, I need some m&m minis in my life. I live in the middle of nowhere, so our stores don’t seem to carry them.
… drinking a 2 liter of sprite every day might introduce its own problems.
Yeah, have you seen how much that stuff costs now, when it’s not on sale?!
So if Jennifer suggests Joyce cuts back on the amount of Sprite (hopefully its diet sprite) she uses for the pills over time to a reasonable amount then this storyline is over and we can go back to Jo-Joe storylines?
Walky updates, Danny and Joe updates, the new Axis of Evil updates, Emothan, Boosterism, Boostersisterism, … …
Mini M&Ms rock.
Was it Becky who suggested the M&Ms or Becky? Either way, glad Joyce is crediting them for it and showing she was listening, even in her grumpy days.
Of the two, I’m pretty sure Becky suggested it
I think it was actually Becky.
It was Becky. Wait, no, sorry, it WAS Becky.
aww, middle name.
I’m glad Joyce found a solution but she should ask her pharmacist if these are the types of pills that can/should be dissolved in water (or carbonated sugary soda) and still maintain their effectiveness
As of right now, they’re not the real deal yet I don’t think. But yeah she should ask.
In real life I agree. However this is the same universe as Integrivact, the antidepressant that works in like two days flat, so I figure they have slightly different meds that will best fit what’s interesting for us to see. : )
Silly question… Is that ACTUALLY what Ruth’s current anti-depression meds are called? was that in a Patreon post or something?
It’s what her FIRST anti-depression meds were called, per the hovertext of https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/voiceover/ (also referenced in a later hovertext when she mentioned new meds “Oh no what went wrong with Integrivact??”)
I mean its sort of progress?
Homeopathic birth control? Modern problems require modern solutions.
Yikes no! Never mind the lumacy of the theory itself, but Joyce wants to control her severe period, not sterilize herself.
Wait, is homeopathy not the one where idiots put a tiny pill in a massive jug of water and swear it’s more effective? I was trying to play off the 2-liter bottle angle but I can never remember the word for the scam I’m thinking of and homeopathy came up when I searched for it. Hard to Google a word ya can’t remember, sometimes. Sorry if I said something rude there.
Yes, that’s the one. Yeah, I doubt “water which has, at the most charitable, the memory of something which is supposedly medicinal” would cause sterilization, but then again, DO may have been referring to how unregulated a lot of questionable supplements can be. But, if a supplement was actually created in accordance with the (BS) principles of homeopathy,
Homeopathy: even a lot of people who might otherwise be open to alternative treatments / woo think it’s BS.
I believe it was Terry Pratchett who said that if you really believe water contains the memory of things that have been in it, and you think about this for more than five seconds, you will never drink water again.
Tim Minchin said something of the sort in his excellent nine-minute beat poem Storm.
“A jazz-backed nine-minute beat poem about critical thinking.”
I though that was Olaf the Snowman.
You’re basically right, except that you’ve got the scale wrong.
Proper dilution in homeopathy might involve dissolving the pill in the bottle, then dumping it out and filling it with soda again.
Then you’d drink a teaspoonful as your medication.
For all practical purposes, homeopathic remedies are water. Which does at the least make them less dangerous.
Correction, homeopathic remedies are very expensive water.
Some medications are potent enough for this to actually make sense. :/
Facetious example: cocaine.
Maybe we should convince them that vaccines are homeopathic. See, you take the essence of the disease, and then dilute it a whole bunch….
Wake up, babes, new middle name from the Walkyverse just dropped! (Her’s was Nicole there).
I’m just hoping that taking her pills like that won’t dilute the effectiveness.
chugga chugga two two, all aboard sugar train chugga chugga two two
Jesus Christ the commitment here.
I kinda feel like regular M&Ms would have been the natural level up from mini M&Ms, instead of going straight to peanut M&Ms. Peanut M&Ms ARE the best M&Ms, though, so I can understand Joyce here. (You know what’s the very best M&M, though? A peanut M&M with *no peanut in it*. I cannot explain this. It’s just a special kind of magic that no ordinary M&M can deliver.)
Also! I’m so proud of Joyce! Yeah she does still need some assist on this, but she is TRYING and she is DIYing. Good for her!
Dark chocolate M&Ms are the best, but they are very difficult to find.
I still don’t understand why her friends are convinced she needs the Power Rangers to assemble over this pill thing.
Joyce has a history of having issues consuming food items, combined with her reticence to even get her pills in the first place. Given she downed a months worth of sugar to take just one pill, she clearly *is* still having issues with it.
While her sprite solution isn’t perfect it still shows she’s on the path to improving her independence.
“Solution” in both senses!
With Becky in particular there’s a possessive streak where she wants to be the most involved in every aspect of Joyce’s life ( like when they were kids) and Dorothy has been going along with Becky’s rivalry for Joyce’s attention lately along with her own tendency to try to fix her friends. I would say there is definatly some desire to keep Joyce as the dependent friend they are used to helping.
Roz covered it in her brief appearance in this storyline. Consistency’s actually really important in birth control. Maybe it’ll be less important for the sake of regulating her hormones, but for actual birth control, the difference in effectiveness between consistently timed pill use versus erratic is actually significant.
Which is all to say, Joyce’s usual hangups could cause her actual harm here if she needs the pill to work and it just does not function as she expects it to, so she needs to work through this.
Joyce doesn’t need the pill to work for her intended use ( pain reduction) straight away and she has just indicated sucess with taking her first one by herself so it’s a little early to call her schedule erratic.
Weren’t people jabbering about how it was 3,000,00% vital for Joyce to take the placebos right now now now now now, or else she’d be Lost Forever to the blackened tides of Hussypill Purgatory? I swear there was a whole “discussion” over how Joyce had this mystical window of opportunity with some placebos that was vital to her real pills’ effectiveness.
The month’s worth of pills are each a different dose, and need to be synchronized with the patient’s natural hormone levels or they won’t work as well as they should. And I can see how suddenly jumping to a high dose in the middle of the sequence could be bad too. So, yes, you do have to start at a particular place in the sequence at a particular time in your cycle, or wait til the next period. Consider that it isn’t going to help until the next period (or two) after you start, and there are strong reasons to start when the doctor tells you to.
Granted: you may have strong reasons not to start right this second but it’s worth comparing the costs.
Okay but the dose on a placebo is nothing, that’s the entire point of a placebo. The current cost is nothing. Whatever level the real pills are at, that’s the dose that actually matters, because it’s an actual dose. She may as well be taking Mike & Ikes at this particular stage. I’m not talking about the actual pills, those were allegedly meant to come later anyway. Damn.
“Since you’re currently on your period, the first few are placebos, to help you learn your schedule”
pla·ce·bo
/pləˈsēbō/
noun
a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.
a substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs.
In other words, not as urgent as everyone is pretending. I don’t care how helpful the real pills are, it’s explicitly not what she’s meant to be taking right now. Mike. And. Ikes.
fucking html
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/coat/
This one? URL has a slash on the end, or maybe you forgot the closing “.
Roz has nothing to do with this, unless Becky or Dorothy ropes her in as well. Joyce has never demonstrated that she needs four people to help her take her meds. What, are they gonna surround her at all times squawking “PILLS PILLS PILLS” for an indeterminate amount of time until they decide she can handle her own mouth? What’s the benefit of having so many people constantly badgering her about this, aside from annoying her into doing some “hide the pill so dum dum doesn’t know it’s medicine” bullshit? Why can’t it just be on her terms instead of every single person she’s ever met going in on her, is what I’m asking.
Maybe I’m the weird one for it, but the way everyone is approaching this would be extremely overwhelming and stressful.
It’s not just you, I’d have gone into shutdown immediately after it started. No one would get any response out of me until the harassed feeling went away.
It’s really weird how it’s being treated as a Good Thing by some folks. I guess they don’t understand what it’s like.
she’s trying
Wondering how much this storlyline is autobiographical
Is there a Lost Roomies vesion of this storyline where Joe Force feeds Danny M&Ms ?
What’s the male equivalent of birth control pills to prevent a painful menstruation?
Idk hair loss medication?
There isn’t one. Going by the outdated and rudimentary binary sex system, “males” don’t have the equipment for menstruation. There’s really nothing even similar for most folks born with the ol’ twig and berries, because we don’t have the organ that stores babies in it for the winter, so none of those processes really apply.
Maybe that’s an irreverent way of putting it, but oh well.
Testosterone salve for HRT for meds that deplete the hormone as a side-effect. I was on spiro for my blood pressure for about 6 months and I was prescribed the testosterone creme after a couple of months, continued for like 4 or 5 months after I was taken off the spiro. I was testing another med for interaction with spiro, and it did, they took me of both as soon as interactions were verified. I think they were testing some cholesterol drug for people who couldn’t take statins or high doses of B12.
The ‘swallow’ reflex is involuntary and is hard-wired into us. I seriously cannot visualize someone who has that much resistance to taking a pill — even one of THOSE kind of pills — that they need to practice with M&Ms.
It’s astonishing how much stuff we’ve got hard wired into us that just… goes right out the window when the brain is at war with itself.
Some of us have overly strong gag reflexes. Tablets are a struggle 😅
I think there’s a countervailing reflex to *avoid* swallowing hard things e.g. small bones or stones.
Very realistic. The first time I remember taking antibiotics in pill form (small), I coughed them back out all the way across the pharmacy, and I was already a teenager. I had trouble with even relatively small pills until I was almost 18.
By now I can swallow even pretty large pills, but that took a lot of practice. I have a really strong gag reflex, and I’m sure that’s a factor.
The only thing that’s a bit unrealistic is that birth control is very small, so you definitely wouldn’t need peanut M&Ms to practise.
I mean, at least she’s taking them?
I’ve always held that Minis have an unacceptable coating-to-filling ratio. Terrible candy.
Worse on their own but far superior when mixed into ice cream or milkshakes.
Oh, they’re decent candy, if you wanted sugar candy, but they’re not a good source of chocolate, which is the reason one eats M&Ms.
I assume “regular style” means biting it in half without going through the peanut, eating that half of the chocolate, then eating the peanut, then eating the rest of the chocolate.
I figured that meant chewing them, instead of swallowing them whole (if they’re supposed to be practice pills).
She’s working up to the bowl of Cadbury eggs.
Hey if it works!
My comment is in moderation
That is the FIRST one I have ever posted that did not go into moderation and was never seen again — figures.
Use less slurs, maybe. That whole screed you wrote about horses and their place in the human reproductive chain was probably part of it as well.
I don’t know why I’m libeling you, congrats on escaping Moderation Jail.
So while I am here and can actually comment, all she needs to do is fill that bottle up with water each day. That way her mind still says “Sprite” and off she goes! At least that is often how my own autistic brain functions.
I always found carbonated drinks help me to take pills because of the bubbles. You have to be careful that the meds don’t dissolve in it though.
But … but if they do<, that’s still fine because the active ingredients are still in there somewhere, right?
Just checking for no particular reason…
If the pills dissolve before they hit your stomach, it can be a problem, but i’m reasonably sure that they should get there like, essentially instantly and probably it’ll work out in that case.
At the very least, i’ve taken A Lot of my estrogen pills with soda just because it was the drink i’ve had on hand and they definitley were working
Pills (and tablets and liquids like cough medicine) are formulated for different kinds of release (quick/immediate, or gradual throughout the day, or delayed release, etc), so it can make a difference, especially if you need the medication to stay in your system longer
An entire 2 litter bottle of Sprite??
1- Aha, metric system!
2- Gladly Joyce knows how to throw up, right? Because she needs to do that like right now!
Carbonated beverages are inexplicably the exception to ‘Merica’s Metric phobia.
Doing that everyday means that triangular smile shall become pretty discoloured Joyce.
OMG! Joyce is ok with food touching now!
IDK, maybe she can slip the pill into a handful of peanut m&ms in the future. It might work if she can tolerate the knowledge that one of the items is not like the others.
That’s not going to work well if she chews the m&ms.
Mini mnms are the best. Like eating little bugs.
Jennifer is right, but that’s still a huge achievement made to Joyce all by herself. Knowing that Joe likes her is definitely motivating Joyce to change more and more.
Yeah! So proud. Sure, she has trouble with these thing, but SHE DID IT! Before anyone needed to say anything too! Luckily the pills aren’t legit yet I believe, so she can practice until the real thing. Win win win!
An entire bag of M&Ms and two liters of Sprite?
She’s going to be bouncing off the walls today! Maybe even Walky won’t be able to keep up.
I take a number of pulls without the help of water, but peanut M&Ms are sorta large to swallow whole, aren’t they?
No, it depends on how practiced a pill taker you are. There is actual medication that size and bigger. I think I could do it by now (with water, not dry), but it wouldn’t be pleasant.
But its extremely weird in this context, because every birth control pill I’ve ever seen is actually very small. That doesn’t mean it’s not still really hard to take if you aren’t used to it, but small M&Ms to practise would be totally adequate.
Becky’s tagged now!
But still not tagged yesterday…
I see her tagged yesterday now, on my system.
I’m disturbed about the idea of anybody drinking a whole 2 liter bottle of sprite, let alone a physically small person like Joyce.
I’m also surprised to hear it’s a 2 liter bottle, rather than some imperial unit nonsense.
Two liter pop bottles are how we Americans know what a liter is. That or science class.
We still doing science class in America? I hope so, but my gut hasn’t been so optimistic.
Don’t forget engine displacement. If it’s not an old muscle car or a Harley, it’s measured in liters.
Standard GM pickup or SUV engine has been a 5.3 liter variant of the LS or LT engine family since 2001.
Still much newer than the legendary numbers engines. 302, 305, 318, 350, 440, 454…
When I was younger I is when I eat food normally there are pieces I swallow bigger than pills. So I might try to replicate that.
One thing I might do is grab a bag of peanut M&Ms put the pill in my mouth grab a handfull of M&Ms chew them and then try to swallow the pill with them.
Before that I would just chew the pills chewable or not.
I’m impressed she can still find mini M&Ms.
They’re not exactly rare, at least in the Midwest. Walmart sells them right next to all the other candies.
What are the chances the pill is stuck to the inside of the sprite bottle?
Eh, I’d say 70%.
I remember learning to take ibuprofen. Non-carbonated drinks work best, IMO, because you’re not drinking a big gulp of BURNING SODA.
She’ll get there. Slowly.
I wonder if it’s a confidence thing. If her time with Joe made her feel that she might be weird, but she’s not a weirdo. She’s not defined by being abnormal. She can do the things that anyone else can. Even if it takes some help.
Or I’m projecting. Gotta be one of the two.
in b4 shes been taking the pills wrong, does the hanky panky with joe after many heartfelt talks, and becomes a mom.
Was part of Joyce’s pain just due to not being able to take tylenol?
M&Ms minis are the BEST M&Ms, in my humble and totally objectively correct and right opinion.
Yeah!!! More surface area for the coating and it’s unique flavor! 😋
I don’t really care for m&ms unless they’re the peanut kind.
great now I crave M&Ms