Harry Potter Drugs

Being the swell friend that I am, I spent this past Saturday night helping Sam learn 151 drugs and their classifications. I knew absolutely nothing on the topic (although I was not surprised to find out that oxygen falls under the "medical gas" category).

To help her study, Sam and her sister Sara printed off 5 sheets of paper listing all of the drugs and all of the classifications, then cut each one out (that is a lot of cutting). Because she is Sam, she also glued each one onto a colorful piece of construction paper. We went and bought some sticky tack, then Sam put all of the classifications up on a wall in the basement. Her job would be to put all 151 drugs under the right classifications.

To help her remember, my job was to list the drugs for each classification while she was putting the classifications up on the wall. This was before the "game" actually began. The pronunciation was a bit tricky for most of these, but overall I did OK (Sam may disagree with this due to my embarrassingly awful initial pronunciation bronchodilator, which, in retrospect, has a very obvious pronunciation).

Anyways, I'm sitting there listing these drugs off (Sam I expect you to know which classifications these fall under!)...

"dopamine, dobutamine, norepinephrine..."

"chlorpromazine, prochlorperazine, haloperidol..."

"diltiazem, verapamil..."

"lorazepam, midazolam..."

It was those last two that caused me to declare, "Sam, I feel like Harry Potter." The drugs totally sounded like spells!

She pretended not to know what I was talking about, as she has not read or seen any Harry Potter, but I could tell she thought my joke was pretty funny. For the rest of the night, every time I listed the drugs, I did so with a fake wand in my hand, and as if I were casting a spell on Sam. It was really quite fun. But I didn't use a British accent because I do not know how.