OK, I’ll be trying some of these. I’m not a soda drinker, so it’s either milk or water. I’ve found milk hides the taste more.
Calcium pill 2 times a day
BC once a day
Multivitamin once a day
Hair and nails supplement 3 times (these are the smelly ones)
I could give up the last one, but I like having my nails grow quickly and strong.
I tried chewable calcium before and had a hard time justifying the expense (those suckers are pricey!) merely because I’m fussy about swallowing pills.
Yogurt, here I come.
I dry swallow too. If I try to drink water with a pill in my mouth, I’m afraid it will dissolve in my mouth and the thought of that makes me gag.
What I’m saying is that – barring your BC pill – there’s conflicting medical eivdence about the effectiveness of a lot of those things.
It’s one thing if it’s your AIDS medication, or for a thyroid deficiency or something.
But, if it’s bugging you, and there’s not much evidence to suggest the pill is effective, just stop taking it.
You’ll end up with “pill creep” and when you’re 60 years old, you’ll be swallwing 60 pills a day and not know what half of them are for.
(now I’m not up on the latest research or anything, but especially with multivitamins, and calcium pills. . .I thought there were questions about their efficacy, and the possibility they led to things like kidney stones.)
Get a spoonful of peanut butter
Smoosh the pill inside the peanut butter so it can’t be seen
Shove it up against the roof of your mouth
This should produce a “can’t stop licking the roof of my mouth” effect and once you’re done trying to lick the peanut butter off the roof of your mouth, the pill will be long since swallowed and you’ll be begging for more peanut butter!
At least, this is how it works with my dog 
Also, try the liver flavored pills. Those seem to be popular and don’t even require peanut butter…
If it’s not a gelcap, I just put it in my mouth and swallow. I actually take pills with water if it’s a gelcap due to an awful work experience. I was running the counter at the pharmacy, and had taken a couple of Advil gelcaps about 10 minutes prior. All of a sudden, I start to get this awful burning in my esophagus, and have to stop what I’m doing, grab a pill vial, and down a bunch of water, all with a confused customer at the counter.
I take gelcaps with water.
I understand this but – and please don’t take this as an insult, because it’s not – you realize this is irrational, right? With or without water you’ve got the saliva thing going on. There’s some preliminary dissolving about to happen either way, though I doubt very much at all. And whatever little does dissolve will be washed away by the water anyway.
Take a decent sized sip of liquid, keeping it in your mouth. Tilt head back, drop pills into liquid, and swallow. Works like a charm, I never feel the pills go down that way.
My dad is a doctor, and he taught me the water first trick. I do it much like cantara, the point being let the pill go down to the back of your throat. Then when swallowing, I aim my chin down. I take 4 pills at a time this way and can barely feel them going down.
I know it’s irrational. But it just creeps me out.
One way I find that helps me (and I am terrible at swallowing pills) is to take a big gulp via a straw with your water instead of just drinking it direct from a glass. Don’t know why but it certainly helps me!
Ditto
I put them in my mouth and take two gulps of water. I take up to 10 at once, because at one time I had to swallow maybe 15 at a sitting. One at a time required about 32 ounces of water. It’s no more problem than swallowing a mouthful of food the same volume.