Pseudoephedrine is Greek for "fake ephedrine"

I've got a cold, or possibly some kind of light flu at the moment. I've also got some homework to be done. I was laboring over a sheet of paper trying to do some vector addition and whatnot, but I just couldn't focus. I felt a sneeze coming on, tried to sneeze, and failed. I tried to force a sneeze using pepper -- a method I'd seen work many times in cartoons watched during my childhood -- but I just ended up slightly burning my only semi-functional nostril without inducing a sneeze.

I'm always hesitant to take cold medication, because it usually makes my head feel funny and leads to a less-productive me. The alternative to not taking cold meds today was vector addition with a sniffly, stopped-up nose that I could only care for with the horrible scented tissues I'd accidentally bought the week before.

I took the cold meds -- a concoction of pseudoephredine, DXM, and aceteminophen. An couple hours later, I'm off in altered-state-of-mind-land. I'm listening to Björk, and it's truly the greatest music I've ever heard.

Am I a some kind of lightweight? I doubt it. I never ended up tripping bawls after swallowing Dimetapp as a child. I'm fairly sure that my hyper-sensitivity is closely linked to the week I spent in the hospital after I broke my femur. All manner of opiates were shoved down my throat and pumped into my bloodstream. I resented all pain meds back then, but I found myself too submissive (a result of other drugs) to refuse them when the nurse brought them to me -- even though I did question her on what each pill was intended to do. The nurses gave me so many drugs that I lost conciousness and stopped breathing at one point. My only memory of that event is oscillating back and forth between wake and sleep, each time finding more staff around my bed, and a device attached to my finger measuring the oxygen content of my blood.

After I was released from the hospital, I resolved not take any of the pain meds given to me, regardless of the pain I might be experiencing. I finally broke down one day and took a couple of pills before watching Lilo and Stitch. I marveled at the movie, amazed by everything I saw. Near the end I realized that this was a Disney movie -- why was I so enthralled? It was the euphoria of the drugs. It's the same feeling I've got right now.

Pseudoephedrine and Vicodin aren't all too chemically similar, so I'm not sure why the effects are so similar. The euphoria is similar, and I've got the same tunnel vision -- my world is the DashBlog window I'm typing in. Perhaps the flood of drugs altered my brain in some radical way that would allow aceteminophen, which is present in both Vicodin and the cold medicine I've got from Haggen, to produce these effects.

I'd see a doctor, but, what exactly would a doctor do in this situation? It's not as if I can be detoxed, I'm not popping pills and keeping steady levels of the drugs in my bloodstream. Bah! Over-prescription should be a crime!

I imagine this must be like the Soma experience. Artificial happiness with no real side effects, save for a very non-congested nose. Well, it's not going to prevent pregnancy, either, but that's already prevented by my lack of uterus.