To think current painkiller law doesn't work

[Soubriquet]

I'm on a lot of pain killers and have been advised to pair it with ibuprofen and paracetamol when severe.

However I can't buy 2 packs of each in one transaction. I can however pop to the next shop and buy 2 more and again and again

I know they are trying to stop overdosing but surely if you can go shop to shop buying them, Aibu to think this law doesn't really work?

I had thought that it does not apply in the US and Europe because there they actually add the antidote to the tablets so it is not possible to od (it's a simple enough drug you can buy it at Holland & barrett) However here it was alleged that people wouldn't want to pay the extra 2p or so per tablet so they came up with smaller packs.

6catsandcounting the main brand name retailer of paracetamol in the US does not contain Acetylcysteine. If i remeber from my training the amount that is required to treat paracetamol overdose orally (it has poor bioavailability) is not usually tolerated by most people so wouldbt be as effective.

I'm mystified by the idea of a tablet containing its own antidote. How would that work, how would you get the effect of the drug if you had the antidote at the same time?

There are many reasons methionine isn’t added in this country, and it’s not cost. You are basically forcing everyone to take a drug that no one knows the long term effects of

Old, but clear review;

ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1175&context=medpapers

And it recently has been proven harmful;

apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js2255e/1.11.html

Annandale- paracetamol toxicity occurs because the body runs out of glutathione, allowing a toxic metabolite to build up. The antidote simply supplies more glutathione.

There has been a gradual reduction in suicides over the whole period. But the drop since 1998 has been fairly small - interestingly it's bigger for men than for women. And there has been a slight increase in suicides amongst women in 2014 and 2015.

It's difficult to impossible to make conclusions just based on the rate itself, though. (And is that rate per thousand of population, or just number of incidents?) You'd have to dig into the data to see what caused the rise in women recently, and you'd need to consider the hypothesis that without the laws restricting OTC sales the rise might have been higher.

There are sound grounds and historical precedent that restricting any method of suicide and/or making it more difficult reduces suicides overall, i.e. it prevents many impulsive attempts from happening. Suicide is known to be frequently an impulsive rather than settled decision, especially in young people.

The point isn't just about taking enough to kill you, though. Many people take enough that they don't die, straight away, but they do knacker their liver beyond repair. Then, if there isn't a suitable liver available for transplant, and there isn't a massive supply of livers, let's not forget, they die a slow and horrifically painful death of multi-organ failure, which the doctors and nurses can do absolutely nothing about. That death is one which is most often filled with regret, because the overdose was either mistaken, or done in haste and death was not truly the intended outcome. It's utterly tragic.

Lougle if you take enough to die from liver failure then you have taken enough to kill you

Overdose causes liver failure, which you die from. I have never come across a case where someone taking paracetamol alone died from any other cause. Death from paracetamol overdose is never straight away.