Anything you put into your mouth has an effect on your body, but ingesting a drug, either prescribed by your doctor or an over-the-counter (OTC) drug like simple headache pills from your local grocery store can be downright dangerous if you are not careful. Here are 10 common – and potentially fatal - medication errors, courtesy of Caring.com:
1. Confusing two medications with similar names – up to 25% of all reported errors are with meds that sound the same. Examples of commonly confused pairings include Adderall (a stimulant used for ADHD) versus Inderal (a beta-blocker used for high blood pressure).
2. Taking two or more drugs that magnify each others’ effects – be careful if you’ve been prescribed the blood-thinner Coumadin (warfarin), “the king of drug interactions”. You need just the right amount of Coumadin in your system for it to work properly; too much or too little and you could have serious heart problems such as arrhythmias or a stroke. Because so many other drugs interfere with its action, extreme caution is a must.
3. Overdosing by combining more than one medication with similar properties - you might have one medication prescribed to treat pain, another for anxiety, and another given as a sleeping pill, but they’re all sedatives, and the combined effect is toxic. Find out about the other seven mistakes
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