Do you take the flu shot?

I've only had the flu shot once, a couple of years ago because I was spending a lot of time around my newborn nephew and my sister-in-law wanted everyone vaccinated since babies can't get the shot and the flu can be dangerous to them.

The whole idea of vaccinating everyone, even those not at risk of harm from the flu, is that it helps stop the spread of the flu to people who have compromised immune systems and can't get the shot (newborns, elderly, sick people).

That said, I don't know enough about it to say if it actually works or not. Seems to me that it would work in years that they correctly predict which strain will be an issue, but would not matter in years where they're basically inoculating you for something that isn't going around.

 

Sometimes in the dead of winter I fake being sick so I can lay on the couch all day

 

I don't remember the last time I got a flu shot. In fact, I don't remember EVER getting a flu shot, though I'm sure I got at least one or two of them when I was a kid.

 

I don't take flu shots when they are offered to me, which is once a month, or every time I visit a pharmacy. The pharmacists get so bent out of shape when I refuse them and always pressure me to give them a reason for my refusal. I don't give them a reason, and then they try to make me feel ashamed or guilty about it. I could not care less what they think; the prescription I receive certainly causes them to have a very negative opinion of me as is.

I've gotten a flu many times but only twice was it so intense that I hardly even remember it. The last time was only 3 years ago and I remember coming home from work on a Friday evening at 5:30 and as I walked home I began to feel like I had taken MDMA, which struck me as highly curious. I had been feeling completely normal all day until that moment, and the walk home back then took me 3 minutes. So I remember sitting on the sofa and beginning to sweat, and then within a few minutes (so roughly twenty minutes after noticing something odd) I was fully hallucinating, seeing monstrous apparitions clawing at my windows and the barren trees outside stretch to climbing towards the darkened atmosphere through a hazy shimmering. In that moment my body temperature skyrocketed to the highest fever I've ever had and the next 2 days and 2 nights are a blur of horrific nightmare visions and a total loss of sense of time; this was more intense and insane than even my most irresponsible doses of psilocybin (minus the time loops). I too have gone to work and endured a flu (and overdoses of psychedelics as well) but never had I expected that it could get that out of control. In fact I don't think I've ever been that delirious period.

 

And for those of you who know what methadone withdrawal feels like, this made that seem like a caffeine anxiety.

 

lol Sounds like an intense diphenhydramine or dimenhydrinate experience. I'm sure it was pretty interesting. Horrific, but interesting.

Just to add to my previous post............I've never had the flu. I honestly don't even remember the last time I was sick at all, aside from just having a runny nose or something.

 

ehh i get it for free so usually i just think fuck it and get stabbed with the syringe when i'm already seeing my GP.

past two or three years everyone in my flat has been sick during winter & i've been fine, & i'm the only one who had the shot so I dunno if it helped me or what.

I was about to boast that maybe I just have a good immune system, but in january i had some "flu-like" virus strain which totally fucked my lungs & made the little shits practically collapse, still recovering from that nine months on. so maybe not.