A few months ago, I had a nasty cold that turned into an even nastier cough. My play brother, Cory, gave me some cough syrup that was nastier than the cold and cough combined. It’s called Buckley’s. I had not heard of it before, but he assured me it was a little known gem.
Ladies, this stuff will put hair on your chest. Guys, it will make you shriek like a little girl. Cory warned me beforehand. He said he actually ran around his house and chugged down a whole bottle of Gatorade right after he finished taking it, but miraculously, it cured his cough.
I was so sick of coughing and getting the side-eye from people, I figured, what the heck. Besides, I can take a Goody Powder without water or any other form of liquid when most people have to darn near chase it down with a shot of Patron. This Buckley’s should be child’s play.
Well, when I opened the bottle and the horrific smell shot straight up my nose, I probably should have taken that as a bad sign. I have almost never gagged at anything but I was this close to spitting it out. The taste is nearly indescribable. It’s like you’re drinking ammonia mixed with tree bark. You’ve never actually tasted either of those two things (at least most of us haven’t), but you think you would know how ammonia and tree bark would taste.
Corey and hubby got a good laugh out of me that day. Of course, they had to stand there and watch me drink it. After he finished laughing and pointing at me like we were on the playground and some little snot nosed kid had just finished throwing mud in my hair, hubby decided to check the ingredients. Gee, thanks for checking on that AFTER I had already taken it.
Most of the ingredients were lost to me; as is the case for just about all medications I’ve ever taken. The one that stood out is ammonium carbonate. What the hell? Had I actually just consumed ammonia? The horror! Again, I figured, what the heck? If it worked, it was worth the risk.
As it turns out, it’s not exactly ammonia. Ammonium carbonate is a compound that is frequently crushed into smelling salts to revive people when they faint. I guess the makers of Buckley’s had to sneak that in to keep you from fainting from the smell of this stuff.
Wired magazine recently did a feature on the ingredients in in the cough syrup. It helped shed some light on what makes the cough syrup smell so bad and why it supposedly works so well.
Funny thing is, it didn’t work for me. Turns out, I had a sinus infection that was draining backward. I had to get some real drugs to clear it up. The fact that it didn’t work for me didn’t stop me from picking up my own bottle, however. I’ll keep it on hand just in case. Who knows when I might need to chug-a-lug on a little fir tree resin and pine needle oil.
