TL;DR: On new med, treated it like old med, thought I was going to die, survived.

Warning, bodily functions are described below. And not the sexy kind. Unless you're into that stuff. Which I am not.

So, I don't take medicine very often, but I have a mostly-cosmetic skin condition that flares up from time to time. Basically, a fungus species that lives on everyone's body really likes my body in particular and tries to conquer it from time to time, creating a harmless but ugly rash. I call my doctor, get some pills, it goes away, rinse, repeat 1-2 times/year depending on humidity. I've been doing this dance for about 10 years now, and to the best of my knowledge, the medicine I've been given in the past in no way interfered with my normal life.

Last week, I called my doctor for a refill. It was a new doctor. He said "I'm going to give you something different." I said "Oh, okay. Same rules as the other one or is there anything I need to know?" to which he replied "Well, you're going to take it for 7 days instead of 5, but other than that, same as the other one." Cool. Fill the script, pop the pills, let's do this.

Day 1, took my pill.

Day 2, took my pill.

Day 3, took my pill. Friend came for a long-awaited visit from out of town (yay vaccines). I took her to the local distillery for a tasting.

Day 4, woke up with some serious pain in my abdomen. I think back through day 2 and conclude I didn't do anything out of the ordinary to cause this. So I grab the literature on my new medicine and flip to the side effects. Oh look, indigestion and constipation. This doesn't feel like indigestion, so I guess that leaves #2 (heh, it's a poop joke). That's fine, I've got something for that in the medicine cabinet. Also took my pill.

Day 5, took my pill. I feel much worse. Abdominal pain has gotten severe and, based on the excessive ease with which things are flowing, I'm fairly confident the original problem was not constipation. Now I've got a couple of added symptoms that concern me. I'm fatigued as hell, and also my pee is coming out the color of apple juice. The good, unfiltered, cold-pressed apple juice you get from a farm stand in October, not that watered down Great Value shit.

I go back to my side effects list, trying to find one that might fit. This is the moment I catch the warning in the literature not to consume alcohol while taking these pills. Somewhat panicked, I flip to the side effects, and see the last one. "In rare cases, this may cause liver failure." I ask Google what the symptoms of liver failure are. Among them are... abdominal pain, not felling well, fatigue/sleepiness, and darkening of the urine. AWESOME. I am going to die. Because I took some pills to assuage my vanity and didn't bother reading the part about how a whiskey tasting would kill me. I call my Dr and explain the sitch. He says he wouldn't diagnose it as liver failure just yet, but gave me things to watch for - disorientation, yellowing of the eyes, nasuea/vomiting, all the fun stuff. I spend the next 6-8 hours obsessively checking my eyes and wondering if I'm gonna hurl.

Round about midnight on Day 5 (so, I guess day 6), I'm making my tenth mad dash to the toilet of the evening thanks to my laxative choice on day 3 when I get to thinking... doesn't using laxatives incorrectly sometimes lead to dehydration? And isn't darkening pee color also a sign of dehydration? And don't fatigue and abdominal pain also accompany dehydration? If I'm gonna die anyway, there are worse activities to choose in the Reaper's waiting room than chugging water. From midnight to 3 AM I consume 1.5 gallons of the stuff. Yes, I know that is not the correct rate to hydrate, but as soon as I got the first glass down I just wanted more and more, and it probably wasn't going to kill me before the liver failure did. around 3 I let loose with the kind of sustained bladder action you normally need a bagpipe to accomplish, and it's so clear that if you left it in a cup somebody might mistake it for water. Thankfully I threw the cup out after assessing the color. Oh, did I mention I was peeing in paper cups? Yeah, I'd decided I wanted to track the darkening, and thought going directly into the toilet would sully the results since the water in the bowl would have a diluting effect. IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO MY EXHAUSTED SELF AT 2 AM, OKAY, TODD? LAY OFF.

Anyway, I wake up on day 6, immediately rush to pee and then chug a quart of water, and of course take my pill. 70% of what was wrong is now all better. I'm still kind of tired, but otherwise no worse for the wear.

It is now Day 7. I am fine. I took my last pill. I will not be touching anything even mildly alcoholic for another seven days. But hey, my skin's clearing up nicely.

Edit: Y'all, as I said, I called my Doctor when things were going weird on day 5. He was not worried about it being liver failure or anything serious, and told me there was no need to go in unless other things started happening. This was largely due to the fact that I've had bloodwork done fairly recently and my organs - including my liver and kidneys - are all functioning normally. The concern about liver failure was 100% me being super pessimistic. I'm gonna go ahead and continue to trust the medical professionals.