hell yeah. with ease.
I used to take those packages of vitamins you get at like 7-11 (this girl I was dating worked at a vitamin store) I counted once, there were 13 pills including 3 or 4 that were pretty good sized. I used to swallow them all at once, usually took a couple gulps but sometimes only one.
Sure. Without water. I used to rave a lot when I was younger, you learn to take pills. 
I’m pretty good at it since I usually take 5 of 6 a day. I put them under my tongue where there’s very few taste buds, get a mouthful of water and then swish them up over my tongue and down my throat.
I heard some advice once but have never tested it. If you’re taking pills/tablets, take a drink, tilt your head back and the pills will sink towards the back of your throat where they’re easy to swallow. If you’re taking capsules, take a good sized drink, put the capsule in your mouth and tilt your head forward. The pill will float to the back of your mouth where you should then be able to flip your head back up and the rush of water should help get it down.
HTH.
Only with liquids… and I couldn’t until I was about 8-10, when I got sick and suddenly they gave me the “grown up” meds (tablets, capsules) instead of the syrups.
And even then, I hate swallowing pills. To the point I pay extra to get my vitamins in chewable forms. Thanks to my recent fracture, I now take gummy vitamin D, caramel calcium, and fruity multivitamins. I only have to swallow my vit. C and painkillers.
I can’t either!!! I seriously thought I was the only person on this planet that couldn’t do one of the most “adult things” in life. Although I do most certainly think its psychological, I’ve even tried hypnotism and it didn’t work.
To make matters even worse, my father is a physician and can’t stand the fact that his daughter is unable to do one of the most mundane things of life.
I don’t have trouble swalling most pills, even big ones, but for some reason, I always have a problem getting the little tiny zinc pill I take to go down every day. I can’t figure out why it’s always that pill I have trouble with and never the fish oils pills that are 5 times the size. The only reason I can come up with is that most of the other pills are much smoother.
On the other hand, my zinc pill I tastes a little like the lik-m-aid stick found in fun dips so sucking on it isn’t so bad anyway.
No problem here.
A few years back I was prescribed a medication that came in what appeared to be little football-shaped lead sinkers. If I tried to swallow them the normal way (pill on tongue; introduce water), they simply fell into the bottom of my mouth and didn’t go down.
I adjusted my technique for the fishing weights: Fill mouth with water; tip head back; drop in lead sinker at moment water is gulped.
I use this method for all pills now: they just flow easier.
A question for the former non-pill-swallowers:
Is there hope for folks who can’t swallow pills at all? Is anyone here who couldn’t and learned how? What’s the secret?
I have a family member who can’t swallow any pills—I feel bad for the guy because he always has to get the uber-expensive compounded medications in liquid form instead of the cheap pills.
Horrible time with pills - I can’t swallow anything larger than one of those tiny little Sudafeds. I just chew the damn things (I know, it’s not recommended).
handful of pills with water with no problem and I’m one who gags easily. Brushing my tongue in the morning is not something to be witnessed.
The trick to swallowing pills is to wait until it feels natural to swallow. If they don’t go down then wait some more. I tilt my head back and draw my tongue along the roof of my mouth which opens up the the throat area.
There are certain pills and capsules that I can swallow alright, but the bigger ones do not go down. They get stuck somewhere down my aesophagus (this can also happen with food if I do not chew thoroughly enough, usually if I am talking animatedly as I eat). It can be quite painful, or sometimes just uncomfortable, but after a few seconds the water or other liquid I have swallowed with the pill starts to come up. (It is not vomit, the blockage is before my stomach.) I can then drink down more water, but it soon gets painful and comes up again. The only thing to do is wait, and avoid swallowing my saliva as much as possible, and eventually (varying from a minute or two to an hour or two) it goes down.
I avoid this with most pills by crunching them up, but there was something I had prescribed a couple of years ago that came in big flat tablets with strict instructions not to crunch them. I knew I could not take them, and had to get the doctor to prescribe an alternative drug. The fish oil capsules my doctor wants me to take now are huge, and are doing this almost every time now, although, I guess because they are gelatin, they clear relatively quickly (minutes rather than hours). I have been searching everywhere for a brand that sells them in smaller sizes so I can take two small ones instead of one big one, but no luck. 
Yes…and no.
I was prescribed some kind of big chalky huge oral antibiotic when I was about 8 years old, and it became the House of Horrors when I had to take that pill…it got to the point where it dissolved in my mouth and made me gag and cry and throw up.
My dad didn’t help; he would yell and scream at me and at one point threatened to spank me if I didn’t swallow the pill. (He wasn’t kidding. Big believer in the spare the rod/spoil the child thing.) I guess he thought I was being foolish or stupid or something.
I didn’t swallow a pill without drama or fear til I was 13 years old, in the grip of mind-boggling menstrual cramps. My mom said, “I know you hate pills but this Advil will help I promise!” and I was in so much pain I swallowed two at once, without even blinking.
That got me over the psychological thing, I suppose. Cuz after that I could swallow Advil without any problem.
But I’m 31 years old now and to this day I have a problem with large and/or uncoated pills. You can’t watch me take them, and you can’t give me a time limit, and I have to have something carbonated in order to disguise the sensation of them going down my throat. I make crazy faces and tilt my head and look generally insane; if you’re watching me I won’t even attempt it. I’ve been prescribed “horse pills” before and I dread the thought of taking them. I can do it, but I can barely get through it.
People have given me all kinds of hints and helpful BS and it doesn’t work. I just don’t like it and never have and never will.
The ONLY HINT that I’ve ever found helpful is to NOT TILT YOUR HEAD BACK like everybody does on television or whatever. That narrows the opening of your throat. Put it as far back as it will go and lean your head FORWARD a bit so your throat is as open as it will get, and just swallow.
Or try to, anyway. I still gag on pills more often than I’d like to admit.
this is also why I don’t take vitamins.
I just can’t face the thought of a pill every freakin’ day of my life. :eek:
If they made adult versions of Flinstones chewable vitamins I would so be on board.
It is harder for me now since I had surgery on my esophagus, but I used to have no problems.
That’s my technique as well. Works beautifully, every time, and avoids the unpleasantness of missing on the first swallow and having the pill start to dissolve on your tongue.
Are you sure you used the right smiley? :o
I can take pretty much any pill. Large pills require water, OTC pain reliever sized pills no water is necessary. Occasionally I will gag however.
I couldn’t swallow pills until my mid-20s. Then I took a trip from Bali to Bangkok that required me to take the anti-malerials proguanil and chloroquine. These were so hideously disgusting that I had to learn to swallow the things.
I started out by physically pushing the pills down my throat. It wasn’t fun, and my gag reflex didn’t exactly co-operate.
I thought about it. A mouthful of food is way bigger than any pill but I could swallow food okay. What was the difference with pills? I had to be doing something wrong. So I started to practise with Smarties (uk version of chocolate M & Ms). just held them in my mouth, without any pressure to swallow, paying attention, and comparing what happened to when I chewed and swallowed a big mouthful. And the difference was simple - with pills, I was tensing up. I was scared a pill would go the wrong way and choke me. I had to learn to relax and just let them go.
I started practising with water. Just holding a lot of water in my mouth and then swallowing it in one big gulp. Even doing this made me tense up, made me worry that the water would go the wrong way. I practised relaxing as I gulped water. Let my thought wander, watched TV… gulp. Don’t overthink it, don’t pay too much attention. Nothing hard about it.
I did the same but with a tic-tac in my mouth. Just let it move as far back as I was comfortable with, filled my mouth with water, relaxed, let myself get distracted… and gulp. It didn’t work at first. My tongue seemed to have a will of its own, pushing the tic-tac to the front, but I persevered. And sometimes it would happen. Sometimes I could drink a whole glass of water in gulps and not get the tic-tac down, but occasionally I hit the sweet spot and it just happened - the pill disappeared. Didn’t hurt or kill me or anything.
I worked my way up to the Smarties, and once I’d mastered them I could take the anti-malarials reliably since they were pretty small. It took about two weeks in total, trying for half an hour or so every day, and I was swallowing tic-tacs occasionally by the second day. I’ve continued to improve since then and these days I can reliably swallow giant chalky mineral supplements if I need to.
Yes, even giant ones, but I need a drink.
I learned to swallow pills as a teenager, by necessity. I used to get horrible cramps back then, and because I couldn’t swallow a pill, I had to take Tylenol liquid. Which, aside from not working very well, tasted absolutely vile. There was more than one time when I nearly threw up from the taste of it. Then my friend started taking Motrin and raving about it (this was back when it was prescription only). She showed me one, and I noticed it was about the size of an M&M.
So I started practicing with M&M’s. As soon as I got to where I could swallow them reliably, I got my mom to get me a Motrin prescription, and it was every bit as wonderful as my friend claimed it was.
I still can’t swallow capsules, though. Capsule-shaped things are okay, but those rubbery things with all the granules in them–no way. Not gonna happen. Fortunately I haven’t had to take anything in one of those since I was a kid (when my parents broke them open and sprinkled them on things–I still have bad memories about that.)