I too had terrible allergies in the 60s and 70s. I remember breaking open the Contac capsules and pouring those little BBs into my mouth and swishing them around with my tongue. It was a fast way for some antihistamine relief. Maybe even some decongestant relief but my memory is a little hazy about that part. I definitely remember putting those BBs into my mouth.
I was in grade school then. If I was older I’d probably have chased it with a beer. A beer taken with allergy meds helps me when my allergy symptoms are bad.
My mother would break open the Contac capsule and pour half onto a spoon to use, and reseal the now half-filled capsule for use later. At the time I didn’t know if she was being cheap, but from the posts here it’s clear that a full capsule was too much.
That’s very surprising, actually, since PPA is a stimulant similar to amphetamine and ephedrine. Before it was restricted in the U.S., it was used in OTC diet pills. Today, Contac uses pseudoephedrine instead of PPA.
Contac also contained chlorpheniramine, an antihistamine that can really knock you out. Nowadays that’s in the “night-time formula”. So you would be very sleepy but with a racing pulse.
I remember paregoric from my childhood. It was the most vile tasting substance I’ve ever had. I dreaded having to take it. I can still “remember” the taste in my mind’s nose.
Alkaloids like the ones present in the opium that went into paregoric do tend to be very bitter-tasting. The same is true of stimulant alkaloids like caffeine and cocaine; I think that’s the original reason that they put so much sugar into soft drinks, which were being marketed as patent medicines back then.
For me that was the 70s-era chewable Mylanta I had to take when I was 12. I had terrible gastritis and “pre-ulcerative lesions,” and people telling me I needed to worry less, and what was I so worried about in the first place?
I actually had a Helicobacter pylori infection. Probably didn’t boil the water well enough in Moscow when we lived there in 1977.
That Mylanta tasted so bad, it actually made me puke a few times. How is that good for my stomach?
I remember the ingredients list on the Contac 500 box. Listed were phenypropanolamine, chlorphenaramine maleate, and under the title belladonna alkaloids were listed atropine and scopalamine. The latter two were in micrograms, IRRC.
I had bad hay fever when I was a kid. Contacs and Allerest were always in the house as my dad had hay fever too. I remember a couple of very unpleasant nights I had back then- I now figure it was because a 90 pound boy probably shouldn’t have taken a Contac before bed.
Any of the “cherry” flavored substances of the 1960s/70s tasted awful to me. Cherry cough syrup was bad, cherry Sucrets (cough / sore throat lozenges) were worse.
Come to think of it, I haven’t encountered really nasty-tasting medicines in decades now. Not that I’m any braver about nasty tastes; seems the marketers got the chemists to fix the flavors. Nothing nice enough to drink recreationally, but not a struggle to get down either.
Not sure if the case anymore, but the military used to use atropine as part of a 2-injection cocktail to treat nerve agent poisoning. The atropine competes with the nerve agent to bind acetylcholine receptors, but since it jacks up the heart rate, they follow it up with a shot of valium.
Not sure if this has ever actually been combat-tested.
Loved them. Once when I was quite young I downed a whole bottle like candy and luckily threw them back up again. But then I kinda like that weird astringent aspirin flavor generally. Add the orange flavor and make them chewable? Why, it’s ambrosia .
When I was younger I was also known to eat whole lemons, peel and all. But not the seeds - that would be gross .
If you complained of a headache back when I was in elementary school, that’s what the school nurse gave you (back when they could hand out aspirin without worrying about parents complaining.) I decided that the taste was a good reason never to ask to go to the nurse. Which of course meant it worked.
Solanceae are such useful plants. I was involved in caring for a close friend in home hospice, and we were giving her a low-dose morphine/lorazepam/hyoscyamine cocktail. Hyoscyamine is an anti-spastic that derives from belladonna, which I found sort of poetic, giving nightshade to a person on the downward plunge.
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