They weren't.
Last summer during the peak of allergy season I was at Walmart looking for my preferred brand of allergy medicine, the Equate version of Claritin. To my dismay the little white box with the blue lining was nowhere to be found, so I was forced to purchase the pink box of Equate, which just happens to be the generic form of Benadryl. I had never taken real Benadryl before, but since all I was looking for was relief from my sneezing and itchy eyes I figured one color of box had to be just as good as another.
I was wrong.
Over the next week or so I started having a hard time staying awake at work. Usually in the early morning hours, regardless of how much sleep I had gotten the night before. I literally couldn't keep my head up or my eyes open. I was doing the head jerk.....you know, when you start to doze off then wake up really suddenly and snap your head backward? Yea, practically gave myself whiplash. I also felt extremely groggy, and my head felt fuzzy every time I would get up to use the bathroom. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, and just chalked it up to a mixture of tiredness and boredom.
Until one day, when I just happened to read the label of my fake Benadryl bottle more closely. It was then that I zoned in on the cause of my over-sleepiness.
May cause drowsiness.
Right there on the label. Imagine that. Reveling in my successful Nancy Drew moment, I promptly stopped taking fake Benadryl and went back to Walmart in search of my beloved fake Claritin.
Flash forward one year to this morning. Itchy eyes, sneezing, and no allergy medicine to be found aside from the fake Benadryl that is still lingering in our bathroom. I thought to myself, this time will be different. I've had plenty of coffee, I am stronger than a little allergy pill. And before I could talk myself out of it, I swallowed the pink pill and welcomed the allergy relief it soon gave me.
Flash forward a little farther. 9:15 a.m. Sitting at my desk. Feeling like there are sandbags on my eyelids and feeling my mind start to shut down. All I want to do is put my head down on the desk and sleep. Yet I fight, and I fight hard, but no matter how many drinks of water I take, or how many ways I try to distract myself, I can feel my eyes closing and my body accepting defeat. Needless the say, the next couple hours are not very productive. I feel like a zombie and when I open my mouth to speak it seems I have forgotten how to form complete sentences.
Thus, I feel I will have to say goodbye to fake Benadryl once and for all. Either my system is entirely too weak, or this is some of the strongest allergy medicine out there. This stuff works better than Tylenol PM, and if I'm going to have a chance in hell of getting any work done this week, I can't keep kidding myself that fake Benadryl is going to do anything other than send me kicking and screaming into the sleep zone.
Goodbye, fake Benadryl. I acknowledge your great power, and find I am unworthy.
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