PSA: Tylenol (aka acetaminophen or paracetamol) is quite dangerous

[browngirl]

The liver-destroying overdose is only about twice the effective dose recommended daily maximum dose (redbird, thank you for the correction), which is way too close for comfort. siderea posted an excellent explanation, including a partial list of OTC and prescription medications containing acetaminophen, inspired by an NPR report which nancylebov wrote about.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Hunh. I could swear reading that it was prescription-only there. I'm probably misremembering something about some other medication containing it. Sorry.

[vass]

No worries.

I wonder if you're thinking of codeine? I know how we handle that is different from the US.

In the US you need a prescription for codeine, right? In Australia you can get a combination of codeine and paracetamol or codeine and ibuprofen, and you don't need a prescription but you do need to talk to a pharmacist and tell them why you need it, and they'll probably take down your name and address and put it in their system, like for Sudafed.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, codeine is prescription-only in the U.S. In Canada, they sell a mixture of codeine + paracetamol known as "Tylenol 3" over the counter. Plenty of people who visit Canada bring some back home to the U.S., although I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

They actually don't sell tylenol-3 in Canada, they sell Tylenol-1. (It has less codeine than Tylenol-3, thus being schedule 1 instead of schedule 3. In the US, we just generally don't /bother/ with Tylenol-1 because if you're getting a prescription anyway and have a legitimate reason to have it, then the Tylenol-3 almost always makes more sense.)

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

Or, well, they sell tylenol-3, but only with a prescription, the over-the-counter stuff, however, is Tylenol-1.