As I was swallowing some acetaminophen, I got to wondering, would this pill work equally well, if taken anally? Y’know, to really put the “anal” in “analgesic”.
There are acetominophen suppositories available OTC, for use with infants. No reason to suppose they wouldn’t work equally well for adults. However, I don’t know if just using the pill would work. The suppositories are compounded with some kind of soft waxy stuff that would dissolve in the rectum.
Don’t try sticking pills up your backside; rectal medications should be formulated for that use.
That said, some painkillers can be given rectally; I don’t know of any rectal acetaminophen formats, though. Opiates can be and are given rectally. A friend of mine once went to the ER with acute food poisoning and was given anti-nausea medication rectally, since she was vomiting too much to take anything by mouth.
Wow, that was an impressively speedy reply.
A man was suffering from constipation, so his doctor prescribed suppositories.
A week later the man complained to the doctor that they didn’t produce the desired results.
“Have you been taking them regularly?” the doctor asked.
“Sure doc. They’re a little hard to swallow, though, and I’ve needed a couple glasses of water to get each one down” the guy replied.
“What?!” says the doc incredulously. “You’ve been *swallowing * them???”
“Sure! What do you think I’ve been doing,” the man said sarcastically, “Shoving them up my ass?”
If there’s anything the People of the Dope are experts about, it’s their own butts.
Yeah, but they’re more often pulling stuff out of it than putting stuff in.
I have to break my rule of not posting in GQ without a proper answer to say…ooo, nice one.
Those answers have to get there somehow.
Ergotamine is available in suppository form. It’s a medication used to abort migraine headaches.
Antinauseants are often given rectally. No sense in swallowing an anti-nausea medication if you’re just going to throw it up!
Aminophylline, an asthma medication, has been used rectally in the past.
Alprostadil is a urethral suppository used for erectile dysfunction.
And the list goes on and on!
Knowing about that causes erectile dysfunction. :eek:
I think a Tylenol pill served sunless would still give you some pain relief.
Rectal medicines I use commonly in the ER include Gravol (all mothers should have Gravol suppositories), acetaminophen, indomethacin, benzodiazpines like diazepam (Valium) or lorazepam (Ativan) for patients with seizure, narcotics, glycerin and biscadoyl (for constipation), Anugesic/Anusol (for hemmorhoids/anal fissure), ergot, etc.
I’ve heard (probably untrue) that French people use suppositories more than average. Italian parents seem particularly squeamish about their use. I see lots of parents who would rather have the nurse jab their kid with a needle of Gravol than use a suppository, even though I’d consider the needle more traumatic. Some parents are HORRIFIED by suppositories even when their kid has been vomiting up everything they swallow for four days.
Paracetamol (same as acetaminophen) is sold in suppository form here. I found this out when one of my sons was running a fever. He was over the highest weight listed on the children’s liquid version, but couldn’t yet swallow adult pills. What to do? Our family doc said we had two choices: suppositories, or letting the fever run its course.
Once it was explained to him what a suppository was, the little guy declared that he wasn’t that sick 
If you’re wearing an ass as a hat it’s the only way to cure a headache.
Back during my 4.5 year headache (which resulted from a closed head injury), I had stuff I called my “doomsday medicine”. It was a suppository with ergotamine and a bunch of other stuff in it. It being a suppository wasn’t the worst thing about it. It gave incredible pain relief, but at the cost of periodic vomiting, every 20-45 minutes for at least 6 hours. IIRC, the prescription gave me a pack of four. The neurologist said to use them whenever I couldn’t stand the pain any longer. After I’d used the very first one, I probably didn’t use them as often as she’d expected.
After the first few obeisances to the Porcelain Goddess came the dry heaves. Yes, I did have enough sense to drink a little water every so often, so there’d be an offering for the Goddess, but IMO, the relief wasn’t that much less miserable than the (awful) headache. That, however, was always my opinion after using it; not before.
Now you understand why I gave them that name, right? :smack:
Of course, at times the headache was about as bad as any migraine can be, except for the barfing that some people have with them. Just thinking about using one of them to relieve a migraine with the heaves gives me the shudders.