I took around 160mg of propanolol a day in 40mg pink tablet doses for the past 3 years for tachycardia. The propanolol stops me from fainting.
Something I've been doing while not realising it's bad for you is chewing and crushing the 40mg tablets in my mouth and swallowing them with water. My heart rate is naturally very fast, causing me to pass out at times, so sometimes I've crushed them because I need them to work faster. My doctor told me I shouldn't be doing this as all the propanolol gets released at once and I've since learnt my lesson. But I think my body is used to it because it has never affected me badly before. And I've had ekgs while continuing this habit, holter monitors, even an echo, and luckily no adverse effects. The taste is foul but I'm used to it now after so long. 10mg, 20mg propanolol etc does nothing for me. It has to be at least 40mg before my heart slows down at all.
A while back, my doctor started prescribing me the 80mg half inderal slow release kind instead. He said I could take one at night and one in the morning. I've never liked taking propanolol in this form. I used to split them in half, take out half of the little 'ball' capsules and just take half the dose all at once. Again, not something you should be doing.
HOWEVER. Obviously, I would NEVER chew the entire 80mg dose at once. That would probably knock me out and reduce my pulse to dangerously low levels. Like I said, I always split it in half and take 40mg max at once. So it's the same dose as my normal old habit of chewing 40mg pink tablets.
I'm tapering off propanolol so now I only take around 80mg a day. And today, without thinking, I split the 80 slow release capsule in half again and took the 40mg. Then I thought that I really should not have done that. So far I've only had 40mg this morning and again tonight. But I'm worried because I know it's not healthy to chew your meds. Do you think I'm in any danger? I mean, I've been crushing them for 2 years and never did any harm before. But recently, I can't stop worrying about overdosing/underdosing on propanolol. I'm an idiot, I know. Tomorrow, I'm asking for the solid pink tablets again. I hate these capsules, for some reason because the dose is so big, it makes me anxious. Even though your stomach releases it slowly, my brain always tells me, you shouldn't be taking such a large dose of anything all at once.
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