“Are you familiar with the effects of this product?”

“Do you know how to use this product?” The cashier of the Kruidvat (a drugstore in the Netherlands) points at the boxes of aspirin my mom just layed on the counter. The dose of all these pills together is probably enough to anaesthetize a hippo... To comfort everyone; my mom is not an addict, but she’s starting to get the flue and she doesn’t have time to be sick. And I don’t have time to catch it to.


“Are you familiar with the effects of this product?” They never ask such questions when you buy a bottle of whiskey, or six bottles of wine. And I’m pretty sure that they don’t even think about asking such things when someone buys drugs (and with drugs, I don’t mean medicines). In my opinion are those two way more dangerous than accidently taking two aspirins too many.

“Did you have this product in your house before?” Eh... they’re aspirins, not a bomb! When you take too many without being used to it, you may have a funny afternoon but it will be weak in comparison to half a bottle of alcohol or a good joint. And nobody ask questions about those while on a yearly basis, a lot more people die of alcohol poisoning than an overdose of aspirin. Pure technically is that even impossible. For an overdose of aspirin, you would have to take more than 100 pills right after each other, and after 20 of them your stomach turns inside out because of some emetic in it.

“I advise you to read the instructions before you use the product!” Alright, I will. Now can you check out these three bottles of wine, two bottles cognac and this bottle of Armagnac please? Thank you, have a nice day!