Rus’ bravery coming forward and owning up to his addiction gives me the courage to do the same. Although I believe I took it to a whole new level for my trip this week.

I think it started with Wal-profen. I was at Walgreens picking up a prescription and needed Advil. The Wal-profen was just so much cheaper — I mean like half as expensive. So cheap I actually stood in line to ask the pharmacist whether it worked or if it was just a placebo. He didn’t particularly appreciate my philosophical questions on whether telling me it was a placebo would still make it a placebo or whether it would just be a sugar pill at that point but he still took enough time to insist Walgreens takes great pride in their drug knock-offs.

So there I was at Walgreens before my flight earlier this week, trying desperately to keep my latent obsessive-compulsive tendencies at bay and only get replacement razor blades when I noticed Wal-borne there at the checkout (where they always get me). The packaging is so similar you could easily grab it without noticing it wasn’t Airborne. And dammit if it wasn’t cheap.

The Airborne packaging notes that:

Victoria Knight-McDowell, an elementary school teacher who was sick of catching colds on airplanes spent over five years developing Airborne with a team of health professionals.

So not only am I addicted to the non-FDA regulated, untested, equivalent to Echinacea but I am ripping off the school teacher who spent 5 years developing it.

My mom would be so proud.

Oh, and Russ, Airborne now comes in convenient Gummi Lozenges.