Reply to post: Re: They may wish to reword and correct the notice...

Why does herbal cough syrup work so well? It may be full of morphine

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: They may wish to reword and correct the notice...

Well, yes, as long as you don't overdose, Morphine is relatively safe if taken under medical guidance but if you're unaware a medicine contains morphine in unknown concentrations it's entirely possible to overdose on the stuff by accident.

For - let's say 'a physically-healthy person' - it would be pretty hard to accidentally OD on opiates other than injecting or snorting, unless actually trying to die. The main risk of taking enough of what you've been prescribed, to kill pain rather than just alleviate it a little, is that you become addicted that way; and opiate addiction is awful (believe me). Morphine is a cough suppressant - damn good one! - as well as anti-diarrhoeal (e.g. 'kaolin and morphine tincture') and presumably this stuff has the same approx conc.as the kind the chemist sells that is actually labelled as containing such (after all, the Chinese have long been familiar with opium. We Brits saw to that!). You could probably drink the whole bottle and not OD on the morphine; but, speaking personally, I have never got 'high' on opiates (e.g. swigging oramorph). afaik you have to take it straight to the brain for that. Otherwise, supposing there were enough in this stuff to OD on if you drank the whole bottle; sure, it should be labelled. It should be labelled anyway, but if containing that much, should be prescription-only too. However, the main problem, to my mind, is that there are people who do drink entire bottles of this kind of medicine, because half the time syrups that give you a buzz if you drink a lot of it also contain a week or two's worth of paracetamol.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon