The time poison control was wrong

I'm sick. Not the kind of sick where I need round-the-clock supervision and one of those robes that's like a paper snuggie that exposes your butt to the world, but also not the kind where you can tell me to buck up and deal with it. I'm basically the healthiest you can be where if you showed up for work they'd send you home. Most of this is due to a spectacular kind of cough. I've got the sort of coughing fits that sound like my lungs are going to invert themselves if I'm not careful.

"So take some cough syrup" People say. "You'll feel better."
And this harmless idea of 'get some cough syrup you big dummy!' is what starts the story of the time I accidentally kind of poisoned myself.

Before I started taking the cough syrup, I was pretty functional. I could get through the day, do the things I needed to do. Sure, it sounded like I was smuggling a goose in my trachea every time I coughed but other than that, all was well. I didn't think too much about what I was getting. I went to the pharmacy, coughed, and was immediately lead to the aisle where the cough syrups live. I picked out the adult strength in grape flavor, and went on my merry way.

Of course I didn't check any of the warnings on the bottle when I bought it: it's cough syrup. I'm pretty sure I know how it works. Step 1: put it in your mouth. step 2: don't do anything dangerous. If symptoms persist, repeat step 1. Later that night, when I actually examine the bottle for the first time I see a warning label on the bottle saying that one ought not take this in conjunction with MAOIs.  I do a quick double-check about the medicine I'm taking. Wikipedia tells me that it's not a problem, but just to be on the safe side I call poison control.

I will say this much: I'm not sure how I feel about having to call poison control on myself. On one hand, it shows a level of responsibility of someone pretty adult. There was a problem, and I didn't panic. I also didn't do nothing and hope it would go away. I reacted in a rational and responsible way that was in proportion to the potential threat. On the other hand, Really? You just randomly slug back medicine without checking to see if there's going to be a possible dangerous interaction?

Pretty much.

Drug interactions are not something I really have presence of mind about. I mean, cough syrup is something they sell over the counter, it's not like I automatically assume it's dangerous or anything. There's a tendency to think that for some kinds of medicine, all they do is one simple task. Ibuprofin makes pain go bye bye. Cough syrup makes me not cough. These seem as inert as lip balm. They're like the perfect houseguest. Comes in, gets along great with everybody, makes things better but doesn't demand too much from you and doesn't stay too long.

This is opposed to anything I need a prescription for, which enters the realm of dangerous medicine. There's the big master list of all the things I've been proscribed in my lifetime ever and anytime I want to add something to the list, I need to check to see if it will get along with the others. There's more internal politics than the guest list for a 12 year old girl's birthday party.

In any event, poison control tells me there's nothing to worry about. So I don't worry. I take another shlug and continue on my merry way.

Cut to: me clutching the toilet bowl three hours later wondering what in god's name made me ill.

Some highly specific googling later and I learn that guess what, there is an interaction. Not of the gonna kill you dead kind, but of the you're not gonna metabolize the dxm in the cough syrup kind. Which is the kind that makes you feel worse than had you not taken the cough syrup in the first place.

The moral of this story? Google is my friend and just because I can buy it easily doesn't mean it is going to actually make things better.