Abreva Review

I woke up Monday morning with a little tingle on the edge of my mouth. I was hoping like crazy it was just a zit but deep in my heart I knew it wasn’t. I’ve only had a cold sore one other time in my entire 40 years of life and that was about 5 years ago. At that time I bought Abreva because I liked the sound of their advertising where they claimed it would just make it go away. When it comes to cold sores that is the #1 desire. There aren’t many going around saying “Man, I love this thing. I wish it would hurt more. I wish I had more. I wish it were bigger. I wish it would never go away.” OK maybe there are some freaks out there that would say that but I am certainly not one of them.

Anyway I bought it, brought it home, opened the box and was instantly ticked off. See this stuff is expensive. I’m not sure how much it was 5 years ago but it was a lot and then the world’s tiniest little tube came out of this box that was 5 times too big for it. As it turned out, the stuff went a long way so it wasn’t really an issue.

The stuff works too. It works like crazy. It didn’t do it in the manner which I had hoped it would though. The cold sore didn’t get smaller. What happened is it went through its full course at an accelerated rate. It got bigger and grosser, but within 2 days it was all but gone. I have family members who suffer with cold sores and that is the fastest I’ve ever seen one go away. Our family has used it ever since and it works, every single time.

But let me get back to this most recent sore. I woke up with it Monday, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that I gave up on the whole “it’s just a zit” routine. I spent an hour Wednesday night searching through drawer after drawer of ointments and creams in our bathroom and finally found the itty-bitty tube of Abreva. A quick search of the crimp revealed that it had expired in June of 2006. Yes. This was our original tube of the stuff. It was only half empty so that is a testament to how far it goes and you really shouldn’t be turned off by the small size of the package (yes, I’ve tried that last line on women before and it never works).

Of course I threw it away without using it. I spent Thursday fruitlessly applying Carmex to my lips. That did make the pain temporarily go away but it did nothing for the size, which had now reached epic proportions. As I gazed upon my visage in the mirror this morning, feeling a little like Joseph Merrick, I decided I would have to cave and go buy another supply of Abreva.

The first thing I noticed when I got to the pharmacy today was they have changed their packaging and you can see just how small the tube is before buying. The next things I noticed was just how expensive this stuff is. $17.99!!!! Always there for convenience was the price per oz. $17.99 for a .07 oz tube comes to $257.00 per oz. I don’t know where Abreva-futures will go but looking at the chart below, right now it’s somewhere between Ruthenium and Osmium on the precious metals commodities chart. Silver is cheaper, but none of these will cure a cold sore.

Not being able to get passed my sticker-shock I left the store empty handed (OK I bought a pound bag of M&Ms for breakfast, but I didn’t buy the Abreva). The good people over there at GlaxoSmithKline know they have the only real game in town and they’re going to make us all pay. Abreva works, plain and simple and for that they should get 5 stars, but since more than half of the American public cannot afford to buy it they only get 3 stars. And for those of you that have the misfortune of having to look at me for the next week just remember “I am not an animal, I am a human being.”