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I'm not a doctor, but I think the only painkillers people should take without a prescription are aspirin and alcohol.

springfeverish wrote:

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^^^ Your gastroenterologist will thank you especially if you take them at the same time.

Lining, schmining!

From Wikipedia:

Paracetamol or acetaminophen is a widely used over-the-counter analgesic (pain reliever) and antipyretic (fever reducer). It is commonly used for the relief of fever, headaches, and other minor aches and pains, and is a major ingredient in numerous cold and flu remedies. In combination with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and opioid analgesics, paracetamol is used also in the management of more severe pain (such as cancer or postoperative pain).^[1]

While generally safe for human use at recommended doses, acute overdoses of paracetamol can cause potentially fatal liver damage and, in rare individuals, a normal dose can do the same; the risk is heightened by alcohol consumption. Paracetamol toxicity is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world, and accounts for most drug overdoses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.^[2][3][4][5]

Paracetamol is derived from coal tar, and is therefore part of the class of drugs known as "aniline analgesics"; it is the only such drug still in use today.^[6] It is the active metabolite of phenacetin, once popular as an analgesic and antipyretic in its own right, but unlike phenacetin and its combinations, paracetamol is not considered to be carcinogenic at therapeutic doses.^[7] The words acetaminophen and paracetamol both come from chemical names for the compound: para-acetylaminophenol and para-acetylaminophenol. In some contexts, it is simply abbreviated as APAP, for N-acetyl-para-aminophenol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetominophen