I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client.

Here is the story of how I ended up writing a review of the Answers at Walgreens program and how they helped me find sleep solutions. So… I was going to wait a month before doing another one of these paid posts. See, in a way, I get to pick and choose what I review. You may have seen the awesome headlamp review, and Duchess’s chance to learn a bit of charity. I picked those and then figured I would give it a month. I don’t want to inundate you with paid posts. Then, a few things happened in what felt like a somewhat predestined sequence. 

First, I fell through my roof minutes after finishing the deck that depleted our savings account down to the 20 dollars required to keep it open. I’m physically fine, but the repairs were going to cost about a thousand more dollars than we had. If you’re doing the math, that is about $1020. Then, as it usually does when I start stressing out about money, my insomnia returned. It is nice like that. My insomnia is like a jerk-face little demon that pops up whenever I have stuff to worry about. He sits on my night stand and tells me how screwed I am. Hoping to possibly make a couple bucks to fix the roof, and to drown out my insomnia demon, whom from here forth shall be referred to as Snarkton Mcnosleep I picked up my phone to see what products were available to review with Collective Bias. That is when I saw the Answers At Walgreens shop experience. With it I could select one of the following: Sleep Problems, Pain Problems, or Digestive Problems. Problem solved! Bam!

To ease your obvious curiosity, my digestive track is just fine. And while my back is a little sore from deck building and possibly a little from falling through the roof of my garage, what I really wanted was to be able to fall asleep without Snarkton whispering in my ear how mad the bank was going to be when our mortgage was late. So I went with sleep.

The objective: Use Walgreens 24/7 pharmacy chat to discuss my sleep-aid options and then make a decision on what is best for me, my family, and my battle with Snarkton. I’ve had insomnia before, and my doctor prescribed Ambien which worked incredibly well at getting me to sleep. That was before Captain though. Now Stevie and I have a son who wakes up multiple times a night, and I need to not be a babbling zombie when Stevie needs me to warm up a bottle whilst she bounces a screaming baby. So Ambien was out. I was pretty excited to see what my 24/7, free online pharmacist had to say.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite as much info as I wanted from the online chat. It was helpful, but more generic than I needed. I was really looking for over-the-counter recommendations So I went over to Walgreens to take a look in person.

Here’s what I found!

Holy moly! That is a lot of sleep aids.

I was a bit overwhelmed. The on-line rep had strongly recommended Sominex, but there were so many options! Should I trust the online rep or should I trust… OH LOOK NYQUIL HAS A SLEEP AID INTENDED JUST TO GET YOU TO SLEEP! I usually just call that Nyquil, but they call it purple ZzzQuil. I wonder if it tastes like burning grapes…

I decided to ask the pharmacist.

Kind of like an internet chat room, but with more faces and actual talking!

The pharmacist was great. He listened to me explain my whole I want to sleep, but I want to be able to wake up/insomnia demon named Snarkton is whispering things about money to me speech, then instead of just saying the word ‘Sominex’ and telling me to have a nice day he smiled, laughed at my joke, and proceeded to ask me some questions.

Pharmacist: Aside from stress, what else is keeping you from falling asleep?

Me: Well, my back is a little sore, and that has made it difficult to get comfortable.

Pharmacist: Do you have back problems?

Me: I have roof problems and I HAD a deck problem. Both are in the process of being fixed. The back problems should go with them.

Pharmacist: Well I would recommend you try Tylenol PM or the Walgreens brand. They have the exact same active ingredient as our most effective sleep aids, you’ll get more for much less, and they have Acetaminophen (Tylenol) which will help with your back. Try a half of one, and see if that gets you to sleep. You can increase the dosage if you need to. I think that will work.

Wow. Color me impressed. Nice dude, attentive, asked questions and not only made a recommendation based of my personal experiences, he also saved me some money. I asked if I could take his picture for my blog and he said “No one on your blog wants to see me.” But just picture a very nice older Asian gentlemen who laughs at your jokes even when they’re not funny. Can you picture him? Good. That was the pharmacist.

80 Pills for 7.99 or 60 Pills for 16.99. Thanks Pharmacist guy!

So there you go. The hole in the roof will partially be paid for. My back may feel a little better. I will most likely be getting a little bit better sleep. I didn’t get the exact details I needed from the online chat, but that was more than made up for by the great staff at Walgreens (#WalgreensAnswers). Thanks again for reading.

Best regards,

Dad (John)

P.S. You can find more photos of my shopping experience in this Google+ Album