Sunday, July 11, 2010

And Speaking of Dayquil

OK, I normally take my cold medicine in caplet, gel-cap, liqui-cap, or plain old tablet form.  Something I can toss back with a cup of water.

My friend, who very kindly did a supply run for me, picked up liquid Dayquil.

No problem.  I'm a grown-up, right?  I can toss back a shot of medicine, right?

So, I fill the little cup (which is 30 ml -- surprisingly larger than I'd hoped), put it to my lips, and am immediately brought back to my childhood when my mother tried to get me to drink a tablespoon full of whatever vile cough syrup she'd picked up at the pharmacy.  (A taste/scent memory I thought I'd forgotten.  But now that I think on it, I can even recall the codeine version.  Shiver.)

I eventually get it down, with large gulps of tea, and take a good long look at the label.  What do they put in here that makes it so icky?  Menthol?

No.

But the inactive ingredients do include the bizarrely generic "flavor."

They put flavor in this, did they?  You mean this was intentional?

1 comment:

Wil said...

Yes, sadly, Vicks flavors their meds to make them unappealing to small children. More lawyers' paranoid advice, or the request(s) of paranoid, overprotective mothers. Either way, it sucks Meyer Lemons straight, w/o sugar.

Then again, I liked the awful flavor of Vick's Formula 44 some 40 years ago when it had coal tar and molasses in it.

In any event, get well soon.