Today I read an article that terrified the life out of me. A new “craze” called the paracetamol challenge.
The dangers of taking too many (even by a few) paracetamol are well documented. In overdose, it, like so many medications, can be fatal. There is treatment but there is a limited time frame in which it can be effective. Despite the warning labels, I think it’s easy to forget this or even to dismiss it, to say “what harm can 1 extra do?”
This feels particularly personal for me. 10 years ago I made a decision to find a new way of self harming; cutting was no longer enough for me. I knew the risks, I was well aware of the potential for irreperable liver damage and how painful it is to die from liver failure, I just didn’t care. In fact it was a case of “bring it on”. For a period of time I took small paracetamol overdoses on a regular basis. I wasn’t trying to kill myself, I wanted pain and damage, but I also didn’t care if death was the outcome. It eventually landed me in a psych ward and I managed to curb the behaviour for a period of time. But not for long and when it returned, it of course came back worse than ever turning me into someone really sneaky, someone I don’t like.
Overdosing on cheap shop bought paracetamol is nasty. When it comes back up all you can taste is powder and for me, it involved spending hours curled up on the bathroom floor. So obviously I decided to try something else. I have suffered from migraines since I was a teenager and around this time, they got a lot worse so I was taking a paracetamol based painkiller that handily included an anti-nausea ingredient. It wasn’t long before I was taking double the daily dose everyday, which turned into 10 and then 12 tablets. It let me self harm in an invisible manner so no one could accuse me of attention seeking and I knew it was probably still causing damage.
This has gone on for about 5 years now with periods of abstinence. Sometimes it’s worse than others but I am making an informed choice – albeit a pretty dumb one.
What I will say is that it without a doubt the worst decision I have ever made and I am sure it will kill me one day. This is why it’s so hard to read about the paracetamol challenge. I urge anyone out there taking part in this to stop and think; think about the consequences. I ask anyone contemplating overdosing on paracetamol to seek help now.
apparentlyfunctioning 