DrugBuyers.Com: drugs and your body chemistry

Thank you, sonick, yawkaw, and herbandseal for the extra clarifications. I'll add one more myself that I'm not sure I got across in the first post.

The therapeutic dose of some meds like APAP are not that much different than a toxic dose. The therapeutic dose is the amount of the med that usually needs to be taken to get the desired effects of the med (and that is determined for an average population without necessarily taking into account individual differences in body chemistries). For some meds, the dose at which the med starts to become toxic in the average person is way above that therapeutic dose. For other meds, even a tiny amount above the therapeutic dose can be toxic. Another good example of a med that has an EXTREMELY small difference between its therapeutic dose and toxic dose is lithium. People who are being given lithium are monitored very carefully by testing the amount of med in their blood stream on a regular basis. And the dosage is increased by very small increments to get to a therapeutic dose.

APAP concerns me because its toxic dose is not much higher than its therapeutic dose and I don't think that many of the people taking it are monitored to see if they are getting too much. Certainly, people who are just taking it in OTC remedies are not being monitored unless there is coincidentally some other reason they are being monitored.

Like sonick, I have had a personal experience with taking a normal dose of a med at one time without any bad effects and then taking the same med, same dose another time and having a very bad reaction. And it was not due to any obvious reason like a drug interaction.

And again, please, I'm not trying to scare anyone. I just hope that this post will make people more careful and observant about what they are taking and how much. To some extent it is a Best if kept off the board shoot too because you can be careful and still end up with a problem. There is always some risk involved in taking any med, eating any food, or living life in general.

I really, really like the serenity prayer, and you certainly don't have to be religious to appreciate the wisdom of it. If I didn't know better, I would think that someone was observing me living my life and wrote this as a message to me.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.