Over-the-counter medications are those drugs that are given over the counter as the name implies to suppress pain, examples are acetaminophen, ibuprofen e.t.c. Some weeks ago @air-clinic organized a weekly contest and the topic chosen was "The Dangers of Self-Medications". I had interest in that though I wasn’t able to participate due to some reasons best known to me.
There was one submission @speaklife submitted you can read that post here. She briefly explained the side effects of some of these pain-killers.
Over-the-counter (OTC) drugs are medicines sold directly to a consumer without a prescription from a healthcare professional, as opposed to prescription drugs, which may only be sold to consumers possessing a valid prescription.
Now I will discuss the effects of some popular pain-killers.
Acetaminophen: Popularly called paracetamol, has been known for its adverse effect of damaging the liver. When a patient uses up to 4,000 milligrams of acetaminophen in a day, at this level, liver toxicity occurs. Now psychologically, there are implications that there is an overlap in the neural systems underlying physical pain and social pain and that factors that reduce physical pain should have a parallel effect on social pain. With this assumption some experiments were carried out on patients and the result can be checked here. Those who took acetaminophen, their hurt feelings decreased over time as compared to those who didn't On the 7th of this month a group of concerned scientist did a research on O.T.C painkillers, and they came to this conclusion
that there is reason to believe that widely available OTC pain relievers affect people's empathy, sensitivity to emotionally painful experiences and ability to process information.
Now if we may process this it means that painkillers generally have the ability to make you feel sober, insensitive to emotions and sometimes reduce your intellect.
Ratner said "the exact mechanism of how these types of medications affect a person's mental state is not known".
Ibuprofen: Also known as "Placebo". It has been discovered that ibuprofen increases the risk of heart worries, and some cases have been heard about heart attacks, strokes linked to Ibuprofen, it can also deplete the linings of the stomach which can lead to all manners of ulcers and heartburns. Psychologically,it has found that women who took ibuprofen reported experiencing less-unpleasant feelings from emotionally painful experiences, the male participants in the experiment, however, reported the opposite experience.
@sammielaboi