As a 30 year old with the face of a high-schooler and the body/physical health of an 80 year old who’s been dead for at least six months, I take a lot of supplements. I can’t even tell you what they are because I also have an attention problem.

I should probably be taking something for that.

I may actually be taking something for that.

Darned if I know.

Anyway, it’s all great until I go out to eat with friends and the time comes for me to pull out my days-of-the-week pill dispenser that is the size of a briefcase. Suddenly I become the focus of the table. What follows is me using slight-of-hand to stuff as many pills into my mouth as I can at once so I can look like I’m only taking one or two pills instead of approximately 600 per meal.

As a young person, it’s always awkward to take pills. I never used to hide it, but then I started to notice the looks I was getting when I would take pills in front of people. Their eyes get really wide and though they don’t say anything, you can read the horror on their face as they decide that you are addicted to some illegal substance. You can try to convince them that it’s not even a drug because it’s just a natural supplement. You can show them the bottle that says “100% Tree Bark” and they still don’t believe you, thinking “Tree Bark” must just be what the kids are calling marijuana these days.

And so I have learned that as a young person who needs pills to keep from having my liver migrate out of my nose (Again, I wasn’t listening what the doctor said would happen if I didn’t take my pills), I’ve found strategies to get my pills without any of my fellow diner’s being the wiser.

Fake a serious illness. If you don’t look sick on the outside, people aren’t comfortable believing you are sick.

The easiest way to fix this is to appear more sick than you are. Clutching your heart while you gasp for air is a great way to convince people that you are ill. Once you have done this for thirty seconds, people will not judge you no matter how many pills you take afterwards.

Once you’ve taken all your pills, you can follow it up with a reassuring, “That was close!”

Stuff the pills in your cheeks like a squirrel in advance. If people say you’re talking funny, just tell them you were just at the dentist and he told you to keep the cotton in your mouth until at least after lunch.

Grow a bushy beard. Big beards are also known as “food catchers” because they tend to get crumbs on them. So before you go out to eat, you prep by tying your pills into your beard. Then, after the meal, you sit and pretend to pick crumbs out of your beard and eat them, when really you’re picking out your pills. People will think you have terrible table manners, but no one ever had to sit through an intervention for that.

Being a woman, I find I have difficulty growing a thick enough beard for this, so I use a fake beard. I have also spent years carefully desensitizing my friends to my unpredictable behavior until they are no longer surprised when I do things like show up to lunch wearing a fake beard.

Stick the pills to the gum on the underside of the table and then drop your fork on the floor repeatedly, quickly swallowing pills every time you go under the table. Wow, I grossed myself out with that one.

Pretend you are doing a magic trick. I pretend to put pills various places, like in my ear or up my nose, so that when it comes to putting one in my mouth, no one thinks I’ve actually put it in my mouth. Of course I never learned how to do magic, so I have to actually stick the pills in my ears and nose. Then sometimes I can’t get them out again.

Long story short, I often end up back at the doctor having pills removed from the alternative face orifices I stuck the pills into.

Then the doctor says, “You have to stop putting pills in your face and just swallow them. And here, you should start taking this supplement, too. This supplement should help you…blah blah blah…something about my spleen illegally crossing the border or something.

I hope you found this helpful. Now if you’ll excuse me, it appears I’ve dropped my fork.