okay damn it how do i remember to take my meds?

[retrowire]

You guys reminded me that I should take my meds and I did for 3/days and have now dropped out of the routine again.

How do you remember to take those damn things?

[steve2470]

1. put them by the sink or your monitor or some place you look every day

[retrowire]

3. i dont really go to the same place everyday

Sorry to make this difficult for you but, sometimes I'll eat breakfast sometimes I won't, sometimes I use the bathroom sometimes I don't.

Maybe I could hang the bottle on the back door for when I take the dogs out in the morning. That way it's in my face.

[LiberalArkie]

9. Put them in the bathroom. When you crawl out of bed to take the morning piss, take the

pill.. I keep my nighttime pills there also just different side of the medicine cabinet. At night, I take my night pills, brush my teeth, floss and go to bed.

It has to be in the regimen.

[angstlessk]

16. Dern it retro...I will buy you a pill box that has twice A day pills

I just bought my friend hers cause her phone will only alert her once a day..

You do have a cell phone? It can be used as an alarm to take pills!

[elleng]

2. When I had to take @ a particular time of day,

I kept them @ my toothbrush, thinking (correctly) that's something I surely do EVERY day. My time-related constraints don't exist any more, so I keep plastic container with 1 week's worth @ 'coffee table' in front of couch + computer. Seems to work.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. set a timer to go off, but do not turn it off before taking your pills

Cause i do that and later realize i did not follow thru

[retrowire]

5. d'oh! why didn't i think of this??

I can do this with my smartphone! Thanks.

[steve2470]

6. excellent idea! nt

[Arkansas Granny]

7. If I want to remember something, I set an alarm on my phone. It not only buzzes me when it's time,

I can add a note to tell me what I'm supposed to do.

[polly7]

8. If you leave your computer on there's a great alarm

program that will scare the bejeezus out of you (at least it does me) until you turn it off. It's easy to set up.

http://freealarmclocksoftware.com/

[LiberalArkie]

10. My method worked even when I was younger and dating. I knew when I woke up I

had to take my pill. Now I take a hand full twice a day. So the only think that ever worked for me no matter what situation I was in was take the morning with I get up and go to the bathroom. And take the night ones before I put the pets to bed and lock the doors and turn off the lights and go to bed.

[hunter]

11. If I forget my asthma meds I can't breathe. So I've got some incentive to remember all my meds.

Or so at least a reasonable person might imagine... sigh.

You wouldn't have wanted to know me when I was young and foolish and believed I could simply power my way through both the asthma and the crazy. Strong will, mind-over-matter, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, all that kind of nonsense. I wanted to believe.

Nope. Didn't work. They knew me in the hospital emergency rooms.

But it was the asthma that forced my hand, got me in the habit of remembering to take my meds. A friend's brother died from an asthma attack, in his early twenties as I was then, and maybe that scared me. Possibly not. Maybe I just outgrew those adolescent and young adult feelings of invincibility.

Taking meds reliably is practice, like any other thing. I take meds in the morning, late afternoon, and before I go to bed. Even when I'm busy or otherwise distracted there seems to be a built-in timer that goes of in my head. Time to take my meds.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like not to have to take meds regularly, but that's never been my situation. My dad's sister died as a child of respiratory problems, before antibiotics and decent asthma medications, and other family members were mentally ill and dysfunctional in ordinary society, so either of those probably would have been my fate without modern medicine.

Best wishes to you, and the smart phone idea is probably a good one, especially the part about not turning off the alarm until you've taken your meds, or at least using the ten minute "snooze" function.

[Tobin S.]

12. My body reminds me when I have not taken my meds.

If I miss a dose for more than a couple of hours my body starts to punish me. I start to go manic. When I recognize that, I know psychosis will soon follow.

[TexasBushwhacker]

13. Get one of those AM/PM pill boxes

And always carry a couple with you so that you can take them late if you must.

[moriah]

14. I get my meds now in nursing home packaging, free. Love my pharmacy!

They called it their "Simplify Your Meds" program, but because they have a pretty decent LTC business, they offer it to all their customers free.

Everything non-controlled comes with date, time, and the name of each pill and dose in each little container -- a day's worth is packaged in a strip of the containers.

I get my controlleds on separate push-out cards, which helps not only for knowing if someone has been messing with my meds, but also knowing if I did or didn't take my Ambien if I wake up in the middle of the night. They also supply empty bottles properly labeled for if I am travelling and don't want to take all my controlleds with me.

So if I'm visiting someone for a weekend, I just pack the med strips for those days, pop out enough of my controlleds for the trip and put them in the bottle, and lock the rest of my meds in their safe.

[angstlessk]

15. There are pill boxes that have Monday AM...Monday PM

et all...how can you forget to take your pills if you put your pills each week in their right slots?

P.S. I will buy you that pill box if you will religiously fill it