It is no news that the cost of living has been on the rise, which is one of the reasons we indulge in lots of unhealthy practices and misuse or get addicted to them, especially in my country.
It is funny how my mum speaks of how piriton and ventolin cures cough, carttarh, headache, body pain, fever, and also stomach pain all at the same time. Believe me when I say she has no academic knowledge of drugs but she pronounced herself a nurse before my very own eyes. Last night she had a stomach ache since there wasn't any ventolin nor piriton at home. She decided to take 3 tablets of flagyl without any prescription, no dose administered.
Well, that was a quick relief for her. She doesn't like to consult medical personnel not just because of the cost but because she feels she already knows what is wrong with her and what medication will take care of it. Sometimes I force her to go see a doctor whenever she is ill.
When medication is being abused its side effects become a risk to one's life. Most times something could trigger stomach ache but because you feel flagyl does a better job, forgetting the fact that it is an antibiotic, you keep taking it until it becomes poisonous to your system, probably with time your system might start resisting the drug. It could give you some relief but then when your system forms a resistance and it fails to relieve you it might be too late to rush down to the hospital.
This is why there are drugs you can't buy without a doctor's prescription. Majority of the drugs have dosage intake by age to avoid overdose or an abuse of the drug. These companies don't want you to suffer or die as a result of abuse or misuse.
So here is what I would advise; If you must self-medicate then you will have to monitor the improvement of the medication for at least 3 days. If it continues then you should see a doctor to avoid suffering for a long time and then spending more than you would have spent in order to feel better.
A time in my life when I watched Debbie pass through serious itch as a result of self-meditation.
There was this friend of mine whom I met while I was in Lagos. Debbie believed that because she always uses public toilets she would have infection so she uses the end of her monthly cycle to treat herself of infection by taking 3 capsules of ampiclox at once without going for a test or consulting any medical practitioner.
This has been going on for a while even before I met her. A day came when she started experiencing severe yeast discharge and as usual she used ampiclox for more than 7 days but it was getting worse. She tried some other medication which was suggested to her by her friends but it had no effect. It seems the long term use of ampiclox has empowered those harmful bacterias that live inside her to become resistant to it. The discomfort she experienced from the smell of the discharge and the itch was terrible.
She decided to visit a medical personnel. Some questions were asked and a test was done, they discovered yeast infection which might have been as a result of the antibiotics she had been taken. Although an antifungal was prescribed for her, it took her weeks to get better but not without learning about the effects of self-medication based on assumptions.
Cost of drugs, cost of medical attention, assumptions and first-aid, all these can make one to self-medicate but at what cost? Is it to the detriment of one's health?. Well, no matter what consulting a medical practitioner saves you cost and pain.