Dry mouth is one of those things that sounds minor but boy howdy does it suck.
I've always had problems with it, but now it's a side effect of three of my medications, and unlike in D&D, these identical conditions apparently stack. When it's at its worst it can take less than five minutes for it to become difficult to speak or swallow. Very quickly the soft palate gets inflamed, mucous starts thickening, and the tongue gets raw.
Now, I'm sure most of you are, like most people I run into, thinking: "there's a simple solution to this, drink some water."
But that doesn't work, because dry mouth isn't about your level of hydration, it's about the functioning of your salivary glands. The moment you don't have the water in your mouth you're parched again. Medieval bestiaries talk about snakes inflicting this on people to the point they drink water until they die. It's fairy-tale witch's curse shit.
You can buy a little time by yawning super-wide until the action forces them to work, but that isn't always effective and looks really weird in public.
The only thing that works is stuff that triggers, at least for awhile, you doped-up salivary system to activate: carbonation, heat/spice (which I don't enjoy) and flavored drinks (esp sour and bitter).
I go through a lot of zero-cal lemonade mix spiked with lime juice.
Which works, but it's also a constant struggle for my ADHD ass to sip rather than chug like I so much want to, so I'm not waterlogging myself.
