Take a big paracetamol overdose, get acute liver failure, significant chance of either death or urgent need for liver transplant–even if you are getting the best possible medical care.
Take a massive melatonin overdose, nothing anywhere near as serious happens. You may become unconscious for 12 hours. There are reports of other negative side effects – tachycardia, hypotension, hypothermia, etc [1][2] – medically risky, but still your odds of survival without serious long-term consequences are pretty high, especially if you get proper medical care. Animal studies have failed to determine an LD50 for melatonin, even giving massive overdoses to animals they survive–it isn't clear if it is even possible for a healthy human to die by massive melatonin overdose, I think if it were to ever happen it would require a complete lack of medical attention combined with a very big dose of bad luck. By contrast, fatal paracetamol overdoses (mostly intentional, sometimes accidental) occur with some regularity.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/102490790100800...
It's setting the bar _really_ low to compare to acetaminophen. There's a good chance if it weren't basically the only safe painkiller for pregnant and breastfeeding women it would simply not exist anymore.
Huh, is that why they keep it around? I thought it was mostly cruft/momentum. But it looks like NSAIDs are risky in the 3rd trimester.
Why would we ever assume that another person, totally unrelated and unconnected, would ever prioritize our needs ahead of their benefit? This is the assumption of so many institutions where authority over ourselves is forcefully delegated to chosen others. This goes predictably wrong just about every time. We shouldn’t even be upset about it.
Two packs will end the average teen, formanent liver failure takes about 5 days though, quite uncomfortable I'm told.
The antidote is n-acytel-cysteine, available from most sport supplement type places, I always keep 100g or so around cos early / immediate oral treatment can make the difference until medical intervention arrives, where they give the n-acytel-cysteine intravenously.
Paracetamol is very safe if used correctly, and doesn't have many serious interactions or contraindications. If you have to have one OTC painkiller it's probably about the safest. There's maybe an argument that it should be prescription, but "poisonous things are available in supermarkets" probably isn't one.
I can't tell if you're joking or not.
Taking away people's pain medication is not a winning move I'm certain of.
At the same supermarket, AUD 3.10 (USD 2.19) buys 2 packets of 24 tablet 200mg ibuprofen. Swallow 48 tablets, take a 9.6 gram overdose. For a person who weighs 80kg, that's 120 mg/kg. [1] reports that level of ibuprofen overdose is likely to produce mild CNS and GI symptoms. Fatalities have occurred with >300 mg/kg, so an 80 kg person would need to take over 24 grams, which is 120 tablets, 5 packets worth (cost AUD 7.75, USD 5.48). So you can immediately see how ibuprofen is safer than paracetamol, in that you have to swallow a lot more tablets to take a potentially fatal overdose. Given that, I think a case could be made for withdrawing over-the-counter paracetamol while continuing to allow over-the-counter ibuprofen.
Cannabinoids such as THC and CBD also provide pain relief, and certainly if we are just looking at overdose acute toxicity are far safer than either ibuprofen and paracetamol – indeed, there is no record of any fatal overdose ever happening from either. And yet, where I live they are only legally available on prescription, and prescribers face regulatory hurdles which do not apply to other drugs. If we are only thinking about safety in overdose, we'd make both ibuprofen and paracetamol prescription only, and allow THC and CBD over-the-counter instead.
What makes ibuprofen dangerous is that people tend to believe it can be taken safely to address arbitrary aches and pains. However, the kind of people experiencing aches and pains (beyond a common headache) tend to already be on some other form of medication. More often than not, these medications are either NSAIDs or steroids. Both of which interact poorly with ibuprofen, given that it is itself an NSAID. Paracetamol does not suffer from this issue.
I know little of how THC and CBD interact with other drugs people are likely to be consuming. However, drug interaction would need to be taken into consideration. As would subtle effects on mental state; focus, lethargy etc.
Prescriptions are for things that are dangerous under casual misuse, not intentional suicide or ignorant children.
Paracetamol is not an NSAID (unlike ibuprofen) and has a lot less negative effect on my gastritis. There are not many painkillers available OTC which are not also NSAIDs and so don't destroy your stomach lining. I'd rather not develop stomach ulcers to prevent some random lunatic from gorging himself on paracetamol into the grave.
Also, it is written on the instruction manual, in quite big letters.
This is a good point and something I consider every time I bring it up.
I don't have a perfect response though sorry.
I try to put people of this particular method by noting it's painful and takes a long time.
Do you have someone(s) you can talk to? Support people?
Please don't end your life. Almost everyone who tries regrets it. Get help with your dark thoughts and keep on being a part to your communities.
On the other hand diclofenac is over-the-counter in Australia.
And why is there so much credulity in this thread? In fact why isn't paracetamol's toxicity more well known? My mom is a nurse and I have an undergrad in chemistry and it wasn't till college senior year in a pharmacochem elective that I learned how narrow the therapeutic range is, and how alcohol shrinks it further to the point where accidentally nerfing your liver with booze and dayquil is plausible.
To post this and compare it to water overdose seem to be the only reason I can think of.
Probably alcohol would be another item that's easily available, and not many consider as dangerously lethal when overdosed.
On the other hand, I think there's still a lot of common sense left with paracetamol and other medicine.
But it's not illegal to possess without a prescription, so you can just order it from abroad and essentially nobody cares, the same is true incidentally for steroids in the uk as well.
I mean, there are potential complications to melatonin…but I think it’s hard to argue that it’s less safe than paracetamol or aspirin.