and motherfucking Ambien is my BFF because I have tried ALL the herbal and alt-med treatments out there for my chronic insomnia and they did not pass muster.

PREACH IT. I am thrilled that herbal and alt-med treatments help with insomnia for people. I am not one of them, please don't tell me about the miracle of valerian.

Valerian, in pill form or in tea tastes like ASS.

And it makes me tired, but it doesn't put me to sleep.

So, ASS, TIRED, NO SLEEP = No valerian love.

And it makes me tired, but it doesn't put me to sleep.

Ugh, that's the worst part of the various alt-meds for sleep issues. If I wanted to experience being tired and NOT SLEEPING, I could just not take anything!

The thing is with alternative medicine (and I'm NO expert) is that a lot of tried and true things are labeled alternative because they don't come from box or from the pharmacist.

This is why it's a bullshit category - it's not based on works vs doesn't-work, it's based on marketing. And in the US, you can market just about anything as a supplement as long as your claims are vague enough not to get you sued. I could put belly button lint in a bottle and sell it as a sleep aid if I put enough weasel words on the packaging.

I could put belly button lint in a bottle and sell it as a sleep aid if I put enough weasel words on the packaging.

Patent medicine has been a staple of shady marketing for centuries.

Timelies all!

Another lazy Sunday morning here.

I don't see it as often, but just a while ago, "Headon! Apply directly to the forehead!" was everywhere on cable TV ad spots.

It's... wax. That you apply to your forehead.

Well, I can see that being useful, if for some reason you need wax applied to your forehead.

The act of rubbing your forehead is probably enough to make some of the headache feel better, therefore you have a headache treatment.

I love a box I saw recently "Earth friendly smaller packaging!" They'd made the box the product came in smaller. Therefore they could claim environmental friendliness. Hubby and I call it the "Now with free air!" syndrome.

I watched that "Extreme Couponing" show yesterday, and I realized that I could probably do better on grocery prices than I have been doing, so I bought the Sunday paper to get the coupons today. I found only four coupons for things I actually use, and two of them were toilet paper. (The secret to that show is that people find a way to combine a few different coupons and savings things on the same item so that they actually get to a negative price for it, and buy a whole ton of them. The store won't actually give you cash if you do this, but you can apply those negative prices to other stuff in your order, so that you end up buying a whole ton of stuff and paying just a few dollars. Of course, you also end up with a shopping cart full of laundry detergent or toothpaste or whatever. The people on the show spend at least 15 hours a week on researching prices and organizing coupons to figure out how to do this, and they all have stockpiles of stuff in their houses.)