Medication Anxiety

Starting new medication is always a bit concerning. You’re not sure exactly what side effects you’re going to experience, remembering to put it somewhere you can find it, in some cases worrying about missing your dose one too many times…

Medication is a great help for dealing with a condition, but keeping track of medication can be a hassle. It’s important to create consistent habits for tracking when and where you’ve taken your medication, as well as knowing when you need to contact your doctor to get a refill if you need it. I figure today it would be helpful to talk about some of the strategies I know of, as well as some of the more peculiar methods I and others have used.

First and foremost we’ll talk about the one my psychiatrist recommended to me: get a pill box, and every week sort your pills based on when you need to take them. If you’re the kind of person that has the space for something like that, and the habit building ability to keep up with it, this is a pretty good method. Just make sure you keep it somewhere consistent.

Second, and the one I use, is to set alarms for when you need to take your medication, and then leave them by the bathroom sink. I don’t have a lot of space in my apartment, so it’s important for me to optimize it as much as possible. Two pill bottles take up much less space than a pill calendar.

Finally, a friend of mine simply has a place where they dump all the stuff out of their pockets for the day, and that’s where she leaves her pills. Contrary to popular belief, there’s actually nothing wrong with this method. It gives her a regular place she can go to for her medication, and creates a regular habit out of it.

It doesn’t matter how you have to do it, just make sure whatever you do to keep track of your meds is regular and consistent. Once you introduce an irregularity into that schedule it’ll throw you off for a moment. But that’s fine, just adjust and keep it up.

Special Thanks to:

AJ
John Beckelhymer
Jonathon Chu
Katie Coker
Tyler Litton
Sara White
Thaddius Goldner
William Moton
Serenity Tomala
Brett Schoonover
Elliot Chapple