Some advice on pill swallowing, from someone who's been doing it every day for over ten years.
This one is the most effective, and the most recent for me: Take your pills with flavored seltzer water! The flavoring distracts you from the gross/overwhelming sensory experience and the carbonation helps lift the pill and distract the sensory part of your mouth and throat from the texture of the pill.
Take only one pill at a time. I know it's tempting to try and chuck as many pills down your throat as possible at a time but trust me it'll backfire on you hard especially if you gag at just the thought of taking pills like I do.
Especially if you're new to taking pills (and especially if you're taking them with still and not seltzer water), try gently but quickly tossing your head back exactly one time then leaning forward right as you swallow.
Not my advice originally, but consider practicing with mini m&ms (once you get it graduate to regular m&ms if you gotta take big pills) if you're super new to taking pills.
Take a swallow or two of water or seltzer before your first pill and a big swallow (or two) of water or seltzer after swallowing each pill. This keeps your throat wet and helps push the pills toward your stomach where they belong.
It's okay if a pill comes back up right after you swallow - if this happens, immediately swallow hard and take a big sip of water or seltzer. If that doesn't work, and the pill is still in your mouth (and water/seltzer is also in your mouth) swallow again. If water/seltzer is not in your mouth but the pill is, take a little water/seltzer into your mouth and swallow again. I've had to repeat this a couple times until the pill goes down. Try immediately swallowing some more water or seltzer after successfully swallowing the pill - this is where some nice tasting seltzer water comes in handy, you deserve a nice reward for getting that ornery pill down your throat.
Unless the pill label or your doctor explicitly says to take on an empty stomach, eat something solid right before taking your pills, especially large pills. This gets your throat kinda used to having something solid interacting with it.
On a similar note, unless your pill label or doctor says to wait before eating something, eat something with calories in it immediately after taking pills. This will prevent all your hard work from coming back up. Also from everything hitting your bloodstream all at once, which can be potentially dangerous depending on what you've just taken.
Some capsules allow you to open them up and pour the contents onto applesauce or yogurt to take the medicine inside as long as you don't chew it. Some don't - check your labels. (This one doesn't work for me, I am a freak who chews his applesauce for some reason.)
All else fails, some medicines are safe to dissolve in a little water and mix with a sweet thing like applesauce, yogurt, or even soda pop. Ask your doctor or pharmacist.
Ok to reblog, ok to add your own advice. All advice above is personally tested by me.
