How to swallow a pill stuck in your throat

One of the trivial nuisances in your previous existence was that every so often a pill would get stuck in your throat, and not go down no matter how much water you drank. Even swallowing bread or crackers would not work.

Two of the worst offenders were aspirin (ASA), and Vitamin C. These would simply shed outer layers of particles, while the bulk of the pill stayed in place. Eventually you would have to use your finger to help cough up the remaining lump.

After years and years of trial and error, what you found out was that upon taking a pill, if you bowed your head as close to your chest as possible while swallowing, that would tend to prevent the pill from getting stuck. But, despite that precaution, if it still got stuck, you kept on taking swallows of water with your head bent downward (and maybe also tilting a bit from side to side). Usually that would coax the pill to go down, without having to be dragged up and spit out.

PS 1: There was a time when one distributor shaped its Vitamin C like an oblong caplet, which was easier to take; but they soon reverted to the stuck-prone hockey puck. There was a time when Bayer and some generic aspirins put on a thin filmy coating to help them slide down, but they too did not remain.

PS 2: when you were a kid you were fed pills ground up in grape jelly, but that tended to spoil the jelly rather than improve the pill. So a spoonful of sugar did not help the medicine go down.

But swallowing a spoonful of sugar is a foolproof cure for hiccups!