I can’t breathe right now and it sucks. I’ve told you already about my abnormally large sinuses and complained about not being able to breathe, but so far 2009 has just been unbearable. And these days it’s worse than it normally is because of my continued and doctor-recommended daily consumption of loratadine (the active ingredient in Claritin), which has caused my body to have built an immunity to the drug. I’m wary of taking more than one pill (10 mg) per day and that amount no longer has any effect whatsoever on my head. So that means that I am — for the third time this year — dealing with short-term nasal spray addiction.

If you look at the bottles of nasal spray in the grocery store, you’ll see that they are all the exact same thing: oxymetazoline hydrochloride. One dose — two shots in each nostril — is allegedly supposed to provide relief for twelve hours. Unfortunately for me the effects last only about eight hours, and the rebound is usually worse than the original problem. I have to pay close attention to when I “shoot up” because it is a disaster if I am stuck at the office or asleep in the middle of the night and cannot breathe. At work it is just absurd because when the drug dissipates I literally cannot function. I can’t concentrate and I’m miserable. If I’m marooned in the middle of the night, I start to snore so badly that I have to sleep alone and I wake with bloody lips which have cracked and split because I’ve been breathing through my mouth.

So there you go. There’s not much of a point to be made here. It just sucks.