Ugh, Spring

It is beautiful here.  The trees are blooming, the flowers are creeping out of the ground, and my seasonal allergies have returned.  My throat is itchy, my eyes are watering and I can barely breathe.  There is really nothing more unfair than the fact that as soon as outside becomes lovely again, I lose the ability to breathe.

Sorry for the wires, taken out of my kitchen window

For those who are in the same or similar boat, I have some strategies for how to still enjoy nature while saving money i.e. drugs.

I like Claritan, I've found that it works well for my allergies, but I do not like how much Claritan costs. In fact, every time I see an ad on tv for Claritan, I just picture the price going up and up.  Thankfully, Claritan has been around long enough that there's a generic equivalent, but since generics don't advertise, people may not know about it.  I'm here to tell you: You don't have to go broke paying for allergy pills!

On Amazon, you can get a box of 45 Claritan for $19.99.  That's a markdown from $46.29, which is over $1 a pill!  Good God!

Compare that to my best friend: Loratadine.

It's not fancy, that's for sure, but for $18.65, you can get 400 tablets.  Yes, that's 400 with two zeroes.  Double bonus, these pills are much smaller, and work exactly the same.  Over the summer, I don't wait until I have allergy symptoms, I just take a pill daily, because I can afford to.  When I was taking Claritan, I was rationing those things like you wouldn't believe, and I was pretty miserable because of it.

But what if Claritan is not your histamine blocker of choice, you like Zyrtec instead (why do they all have such stupid names?). 

You can get 70 Zyrtec for $31.08 on Amazon, or you can get Cetrizine HCL for $16.99 for 365 tablets.  It has the same active ingredient, and when you do a search in Amazon for Zyrtec, this one pops up as well.

I'm not trying to be a shill for Amazon, but that's where I usually get drugs like this.  You can find them in stores, but not always and not all stores, so I just go straight for the online.  Thankfully, the only real allergies I have are seasonal pollen-type allergies, but if anyone else has a good generic they like, let me know in the comments.

**Disclaimer, I'm obviously not a doctor, I'm a librarian, don't do anything rash or against your doctor's wishes just because I said so.