A Changsha man recently made news headlines in China after it was reported that he became hooked on cold medication 10 years ago and has taken over 30,000 pills since then just to satisfy his addiction.
The 48-year-old man, surnamed Wang, was featured in a viral Pear video in which he explains that he first bought an unspecified brand of cold medicine about a decade ago, to treat a headache. He took a couple of them and they were very effective, so every time he felt even a slight discomfort he always popped some more pills, which made him feel a lot better. The problem was that in time, he had to increase the dose to get the same results, and he reached a point where he took between 8 to 12 of these pills every day just to function normally. In recent years, the man’s addiction to the pills had gotten so bad that if he went too long without taking some, he would start to get melancholic, then become inexplicably irritated. He also experienced physical symptoms, like headaches and a general feeling of discomfort.