Thoughts on Advil

There is a bottle of Advil in my medicine cabinet that my last roommate left behind. I would never have bought it for myself. I feel like name brand painkillers are a gross indulgence when a larger sized bottle of the store brand can be bought for nearly half the price. And yet, these days when I reach for something to numb a headache, my hand eschews the hulking, anonymous bottles that stand like bouncers amoung the cough syrup and vitamin C and goes for the Advil instead.

I love the shape of the container, the way the cap slopes gracefully into the shoulders of the bottle. And don’t get me started on the glossy, sweet coating on the pills. You can even swallow them without water.

Does this mean I’ll change my ways and start buying brand name ibuprofen? Probably not. When that bottle of the big A runs out (and it’s starting to sound empty and forlorn when rattled) I’ll switch back to the bitter, matte-finished pills that can be had for cheap. Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed this short visit to the land of consciously designed and ergonomic headache relief.

0 thoughts on “Thoughts on Advil

  1. Ellen

    3 other thoughts:
    [1] – keep the bottle and fill it with the ibuprophen

    [2] – Are you a coupon clipper? Sometimes a combination of a sale and a coupon actually can get you name brands at or lower than generic costs.

    [3] – to stretch out the feeling, instead of taking 2 advil, take 1 advil and 1 ibuprophen, so that you still enjoy the tactile sensation of the advil, just less of it but for more iterations.

    None of these may work for you, but they are food for thought, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to mention (I’m a fan of cheap myself).

    Reply
  2. Marisa

    You guys are very bright. For some reason it never occurred to me to put the store brand ibuprofen in the Advil bottle. It is definitely food for thought.

    Reply
  3. kate

    I am a big fan of generic, especially when it comes to meds. Some things, however, I will indulge in, even if there is a store brand where I can save a buck or two.

    I look at it this way: I save many pennies by buying generic, but I allow myself to spend the extra dollar or two on something that I really like. I don’t do it often, and sometimes it just makes me feel better when I do.

    Maybe it’s all psychosomatic, but my headache seems to disappear a big quicker when I take Advil.

    Reply
  4. ted

    a nice thing about advil is that the coating is sweet which is not so with generic ibuprofen. sometimes I just suck on them like candy. okay, i’m joking about the candy thing 🙂

    Reply

Leave a Reply to kate Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *