Silly Rory

Well, hopefully this will be a lesson we can all learn from...
I was feeling so crap yesterday that I popped to a pharmacy on my lunch break to ask for some advice and some drugs to help alleviate my suffering. The kindly young lady recommended a box of pills that contain both paracetamol and a decongestant. She said that would take away the aches and pains and help shift the blockage in my sinuses.
She was right.
By the time I got home last night I was feeling much, much better, having dosed myself up in the early afternoon and again before I left work. I enjoyed my tea, had a great evening with the family and went to bed to read "Precipice" - the latest book by Robert Harris. I took the pills again before going to sleep as I thought they could work their magic while I lay there and they would give me a night of uninterrupted snoozing, after a couple of nights of coughing myself awake constantly. But it didn't quite pan out that way.
I woke up at 2am as if someone had just jolted me out of a power nap. My heart was a bit on the fast side and my brain was firing like a savant, running through ideas for stuff at work, starting to fret about Christmas schedules (yes, really) and then coming up with an idea for a collection of short stories that I could add to this blogsite as posts one month. I even picked up a notepad and started scribbling down some ideas for characters. Then I got up and walked around the kitchen, I had a little step outside to see what the Moon was doing, and I kept thinking, "Well, insomnia is back but it doesn't normally feel like this."
I managed to calm down a bit at about 4am, so I put on a guided meditation and slowly drifted off to sleep.
I mentioned it to Philippa this morning and she said, "Did those pills have caffeine in? That might explain what happened..." so I had a little look at the leaflet, and that was when I realised what I had done. Caffeine wasn't mentioned, but it clearly said, "DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN 4 TABLETS IN ANY 24 HOURS". I had taken 6 in about 9 hours.... See, I had misunderstood what the kindly lady said and I thought they were just paracetamol with an extra ingredient, and of course, with paracetamol you take two tablets every four hours, so that was what I had done. The leaflet made it quite clear that if you took too many, you should tell someone, so off I drove to the pharmacy.
Turns out that the decongestant in the pills is also a massive stimulant. So I had overmedicated myself with something that had put my brain into overdrive. No wonder I was planning things for December...
Anyway, no real harm done. I have to drink a lot of fluids today to make sure it's all flushed out of my kidneys, I have to avoid ANY over-the-counter remedies for the next day, and I have to damn well make sure I read everything properly when I get given new medication in the future. But all I'm left with is a rather tired feeling, a slight hangover, and a notepad that reads like a teenage cry for help or the insane ramblings of a psychotic.

RC 11-6-25