Studies are showing that the most widely sold oral decongestant in the US doesn’t do anything, but we already knew that. The name of the drug is phenylephrine, and its sold as a key ingredient in things like NyQuil and other cold medicines.
When the Feds decided to stop people from making Meth, they needed to pull pseudoephedrine from the market, so they were looking for a replacement and settled on phenylephrine.
In the hospital, the intravenous version of phenylephrine is called “neo” by nurses. It’s found in nasal sprays like neo-synephrine, where it works pretty well. It’s a vasoconstrictor, meaning that it causes blood vessels to constrict, and it can be useful for increasing a patient’s blood pressure without affecting heart rate when given in an IV, and it shrinks sinus tissue when sprayed in the nose. When given orally, not so much.
It also doesn’t work worth a darn as a cold medicine. Anyone who has tried taking it knows that it doesn’t really work. If you want a true decongestant, you have to go to the pharmacy counter and hand over ID so your cold medicine can be registered. I guess that way, the cops can more effectively catch those who make meth.
Except meth is still widely available, but now I can’t breathe whenever I have a cold.

