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I want to share the stories of three people who started using the same common over-the-counter medication, as do thousands of others throughout this country. For each, it significantly changed their life for the worse. None initially thought this seemingly innocuous pill would cause the problems it did.
The first was the brother of a local radiologist. The radiologist called me, worried about his brother. “He’s up from Florida, and he’s a nervous wreck. He can’t think straight and is in no condition to go back home to Florida right now,” he told me. We met at my office, and after talking to him and his family, I found that one medication started recently to help with the stress of travel had changed him from a normal, functioning person to someone completely different.
The second was a woman who had schizophrenia. She had been doing fine on her medications for a long time, but suddenly, her hallucinations returned. She was terrified that people were attacking her. It turned out that she had recently started taking the same pill as the radiologist’s brother.
The third was a friend, younger than the others, and about my age at the time. She described suddenly seeing things that weren’t there while driving down the highway. Luckily, she pinned down the cause and effect to the same medication the others were taking, and that she had recently started. The visual hallucinations when driving went away.
What was the culprit? Tylenol PM. Something most people wouldn’t think twice about. Tylenol with something else in it to help you sleep.
But that something else was an old antihistamine – diphenhydramine, also known as the common brand name Benadryl – that can cause anxiety, fatigue, urinary retention, and vision changes, among other things, particularly in older adults.
It seemed like a simple solution to get a good night’s sleep, but for these three people it was near catastrophic.