Husband making a side effect his personality

[BuzzLightEars]

My husband recently started taking a new tablet and one of the side effects is irritability.
I've pulled him up a few times about being snappy with the kids and he's just waved a Google search in my face saying I can't help it it's a side effect.

We went to a family christening at the weekend and he was his normal cheery self all day but as soon as we got back in the car he was shouting at the kids for laughing/chattering and trying to tell me how/where to drive when the sat nav was already on.

I've told him to go back to the doctor and ask for different medication because this one isn't suitable but he says it's doing its job.

AIBU to just book him an appointment and take him myself

My husband used to get angry when on steroids. Took a while to recognise it but once he realised he used to control it/ remove himself from situations. If your husband now knows the medication is making him irritable he needs to find ways of dealing with it.

Isn't that what everyone does to some degree? We're on out best behaviour at work and in social situations and sometimes let off steam at home. These kinds of meds make the extremes bigger and harder to control.

I agree, it’s an excuse, it’s not the medication. And even if the medication did cause irritability just like perimenopause does, acting on those feeling is a choice. Just because you feel irritated, that doesn’t give you license to shout or be awful to your wife and kids.

You can’t book an appointment for him and take him to the doctor as he isn’t a child, but you can tell him he sorts how he acts on his irritation now.

The first ones? Yes of course. You can’t just be a nasty bastard to everyone because you’re pregnant, due on or menopausal. That’s not OK.

Diabetic hypo is different. The brain literally isn’t functioning properly. I would also forgive those with brain injury or disabilities. Are you saying menopause makes people akin to those with brain damage?

If us women, who've done the menopause hadn't have found coping methods, we'd have a crisis in women's prisons. Women constantly manage our emotions.

My thoughts exactly!

If it's a side effect, it's not really controllable. It's there, like roid rage.

And why would he be fine when in public with other adults around then a few minutes later yelling at his kids in the car? That would mean the behaviour is controllable and he chooses not to when with his family. IOW, a conscious choice to be angry and verbally abusive when there's no one to see it.

Surely everyone has moments in private when they behave in ways they wouldn't at home or socially?

The harder you have to work to keep it all in when you're out the more "necessary" it is that it comes out when you get home.

I have medication that causes irritability and mood swings and I can’t control it. I can see when I’m being in a mood and I can’t fake it or laugh it off, so it’s odd that he seemingly could. However, I can be fine one minute and then enraged the next, so if this was a once off, it could have been the confines of the car that triggered him. But it is unreasonable for him not to discuss alternatives. Is this set to be long lasting? If it is, you need to decide if you can live with it. I couldn’t live with it in myself so I’m changing my meds.

Sometimes giggly children and lots of laughter really piss me off to the point I feel out of control and wanting to scream, but I just put on some headphones and excuse myself politely for 10 minutes at the earliest opportunity where it won't inconvenience my family, and return ready to pick up the slack once I am calmed down.

Your husband needs to take control of himself and how his medication makes interacting with the environment by asking for a different medication or using easily accessible aids.

It sounds like he can control himself when he wants to and chooses not to at other times, tell him you won’t put up with him being a dick - if the medication is his excuse he needs to change the medication. Refusing to do so means he thinks it is ok that you have to put up with his bad behaviour.

Mothering adult males is really hard work, it’s rewardless.