Sudafed v. Sudafed PE

The below mentioned product was purchased by me for my personal use. I am not being monetarily paid for this review. I will give my honest opinion and thoughts regarding said product anyway.

I have suffered from sinus headaches, sinus infections, allergies and other above the shoulder type colds my whole life. When I lived in Utah, I could guarantee at least three sinus infections over the winter months and countless sinus headaches during spring and summer. It was something I was used to and learned to live with once I figured out the correct combination of medication to treat my self. In fact, back in the day, two Sudafed and two Tylenol were all I needed to get rid of a major sinus headache. If I got really sick, like head cold sick, I would take a shot of Alka Seltzer Cold (because to drink a whole glass of that crap was GROSS) and be completely functional within a half hour.

Anyway, one day I had a bad head cold. I couldn't get rid of the headache and my eyes were throbbing. I was out of Sudafed so I ran to the local Walgreens. I noticed the box of Sudafed looked different but didn't really think much of it. I came home, took two Sudafed and waited. Nothing. Nothing happened. I didn't have that feeling of pressure relief. I didn't have that ability to breath through the left side of my nose. I had nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

I knew that back in 2000, many cold medicines were recalled and reformulated because of issues with phenylpropanolamine hydrochloride (PPA) causing strokes, so I wondered if perhaps that was the issue with Sudafed and perhaps why it wasn't working for me (after the recall on Alka Seltzer Cold for PPA, I couldn't take it anymore because it didn't work like it used to and it made me so tired, it was like taking a sleeping pill and I couldn't function)

Anyway, after about two hours, I was still miserable so I dug through my purse, also known as the vast wasteland of all things lost, and I found an old crumpled up box of Sudafed with two pills left. I gobbled them down and withing a half hour, I was able to breath again and the pressure was off, literally. But I did notice that my new Sudafed had PE behind it, and the old Sudafed, the good stuff, did not.

I found out that in the year 2000, there were federal regulations having to do with the war on drugs making it difficult to buy products containing pseudoephedrine because it is a big meth ingredient. As such, the makers of Sudafed replaced the ingredient pseudoephedrine, with a new decongestant, phenylephrine so that the product could be easily purchased.

Well, I am here to tell you,

<----- this stuff sucks. Seriously.



What irritates me the most, well, the thingS that irritate me the most are these:

a) if I get a head cold (like I am currently suffering from now) and I want to go buy the good stuff, I need to make sure I go when the pharmacy is open, so I can show my ID and give my blood sample and a copy of my family tree just to get a medicine that works for me. This isn't helpful to me when I run out of meds at 11:16 p.m.

b) from what I have heard tell by various pharmacists, it would take more boxes of regular Sudafed to make a batch of meth than what stores normally carry.

c) the government has put regulations on Sudafed and how it can be bought, yet there still seems to be a meth problem of epic proportion in this great United States of ours.

d) and finally, I cannot breath and Vicks isn't helping me and I'm out of the good stuff and I took four Sudafed PE and I STILL CANNOT BREATH and it is making me C.R.A.N.K.Y.

So there you have it. If Sudafed PE works for you, I'm glad for you. It does not work for me and that blows because it is late, the pharmacy is closed, I have to work tomorrow and I cannot lay my head down because it gets so clogged I cannot breath and then I can't sleep and it becomes an ugly vicious circle of misery that I take out on the Internets. Forgive me.