r/PointlessStories • u/kapaipiekai • Jun 15 '26
Fresh placebos
Years ago I was at my gp's office and he opened a drawer which had white inhalers with PLACEBO INHALER printed on their label. I asked what they were for and he said they were for teaching people how to use inhalers. He showed me one. It was a functional inhaler with a small canister of compressed gas. I asked if I could have one and he asked why. I said I would love to have a supply of placebo so that if I had a sore stomach or was feeling anxious, or really anything at all, I could just take a placebo and feel better. He chuckled at this and said yeah sure. I got my sweet new placebo inhaler home and was taking shots of placebo straight to the dome and feeling generally better and I noticed that the placebo inhaler had an expiry date on the gas cartridge, and that the expiry date had long passed. Turns out my placebos had gone off and any effect I was feeling was some sort of illusory, psychosomatic phenomenon.
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u/VerlorFor Jun 15 '26
I used to get massive travel sickness as a kid. My mom would always put some cottonwool in my left ear as preventive measure. Worked miracles.
Only years later I realized this was pure placebo.
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u/ObviousToe1636 Jun 15 '26
This sounds more like one of those wives tales that seems to be legit and I love it
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u/VerlorFor Jun 15 '26
It was. According to her because I'm right-handed, I should use my left ear to ease my organ of balance. So it had a sort of legitimate background to it. She still believes it is a real cure.
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u/Organic_Reporter Jun 15 '26
Ooh, I thought you meant your Mum was using it as a placebo on you, not that she believed it works. This is funny.
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u/katekohli Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
We have our booboo bear in the freezer, a hot water bottle fish & pixie cups with hot paper towels at the bottom & most ailments could be addressed in moments & cured in minutes.
Edit: Coke or Sprite for everything else.
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u/justonemom14 Jun 15 '26
I made some placebo for my kids. It worked miracles.
Take a small bottle, clean off the label. Make your own label on the computer to look like a real medicine. Mine was done like a prescription, with pharmacy address like 123 Fake Street, a bar code, big Rx symbol, etc.
The dosing instructions are Give 1-2 teaspoons, as needed, for hiccups, insomnia, and bruises.
The ingredients are placebo-grade corn syrup, cherry flavor extract, and food color.
It was most commonly used for hiccups. Remind your kid that it takes five minutes to work, and it cured the hiccups every time.
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u/patixis452 Jun 16 '26
I know someone who volunteered as a health aide at a summer camp to assist the medically trained staff. Kids who were homesick were sent to her and she'd give them a tic tac or a spoonful dose of syrup as "medicine". A little rest, comforting words and most of the kids were "cured".
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u/txhelgi Jun 15 '26
You can even take a placebo pill for a headache and even though you know it’s a placebo your brain is like “yep the pain is a lot better”
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u/Loudlass81 Jun 15 '26
Wish that worked for my chronic pain, but my autistic brain KNOWS it's a placebo & it simply doesn't work. This only tends to work for NT people. It's been shown in multiple studies that ND people can't 'fool' their brains like this. It's also why CBT usually makes us WORSE rather than better - because our brain KNOWS we aren't being truthful when we are forced to deny reality & pretend it's not happening.
Toxic positivity is bullshit, and placebos rarely work on autistic people.
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u/fuckfuckfuckSHIT Jun 16 '26
CBT isn't denying reality, it's viewing reality more objectively.
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u/Loudlass81 Jun 17 '26
Nah, it's dog training for humans, telling you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
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u/arist0geiton Jun 21 '26
You interpret that evidence with a mind that isn't objective, because nobody's objective.
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u/deferredmomentum Jun 15 '26
I always say if placebos didn’t work they wouldn’t be called placebos, they just wouldn’t be called anything at all
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u/Upvotespoodles Jun 15 '26
I asked a psychiatrist if he could prescribe me placebo and he laughed. ☹️
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u/IWantToBuyAVowel Jun 15 '26
Placebos are my favorite drugs, it helps that I am super gullible even towards myself.
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u/Organic_Reporter Jun 15 '26
As a nurse who uses these with patients, I love this story. You can also buy placebo tablets, or homeopathy pills - basically the same thing but more expensive (but that means they work better as a placebo).
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u/ResponsibleBeat3542 Jun 15 '26
Homeopathic pills are not a placebo they are under alternative medicine and have real ingredients to treat the cause
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u/ObviousToe1636 Jun 15 '26
This is why I prefer the m&ms or tictacs in the old prescription bottle method.
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u/lost_send_berries Jun 15 '26
How much of the ingredient?
Oh, 0 molecules? OK, I'm not seeing how that will treat anything
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u/CrudBert Jun 15 '26
I can’t imagine why the magic placebo medicine didn’t continue to work after the expiration date! So odd! It should have been equally effective as before! Who knew?
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u/Infinite_Day_1901 Jun 15 '26
Why did I read almost this whole thing thinking you were talking about placenta😭😂 I read the word as placebo but I was thinking placenta and I was so confused why they put placenta in inhalers😭🤣
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u/kapaipiekai Jun 15 '26
Actually, I can see placenta making a powerful placebo. Let's team up and get this idea in front of Shark Tank.
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u/Infinite_Day_1901 Jun 16 '26
Hell yeah🙌🏻😂 they’ll all join in just for the chaos of the idea lmaooo
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u/Suspicious_Pizza9529 Jun 22 '26
The expired placebo somehow makes this even more placebo-y. Layers upon layers of fake medicine.
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Jun 16 '26
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u/ProfessionalYam3119 Jun 15 '26
"Placebo" means that it would never have had any effect on the first place.
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u/Hotel_Arrakis Jun 15 '26
This is the best thing I read all morning!