What this app does, and what it doesn't

What this app is

It is a notebook. You type in what you took and how much, and it keeps the list and adds up the totals so you can see whether they are going down.

It is not a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist or a therapist, and it is not medical advice. It has not been checked or approved by anyone. Nothing in it should be used to decide what to take, how much to take, or when to stop.

Nobody reads your log. It is not monitored. Writing something down here does not tell a doctor, a parent, a school, a hospital or us, and it does not call anyone for help.

It does not warn you about anything

This is the most important thing on this page. The app has no idea whether what you typed is safe.

It does not check daily limits, so it will not tell you when you have had too much acetaminophen (Tylenol) for one day, which can destroy a liver at doses that do not feel like very much.

It does not check mixtures or interactions. It will not warn you that opioids with benzodiazepines, or either of them with alcohol, stops people's breathing. It will not warn you about two medicines that do the same thing, or a medicine that clashes with something you already take, or grapefruit, or a supplement, or anything else.

It does not know your allergies, your weight, your age, your kidneys, your liver, your pregnancy, or the other things you take. It does not check whether a medicine is expired, recalled, counterfeit, or the wrong one.

You can type any amount of anything into it and it will save the number without a word. Silence from this app never means something is safe.

If you want a real answer about a dose or a mixture, ask a pharmacist, ask your doctor, or call Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222, which is free, answered day and night by experts, and does not get you in trouble.

If you feel strange in any way, call 911

Do not look it up in this app. Do not wait to see whether it passes. Do not worry about whether it is bad enough to bother anyone.

Call 911 for trouble breathing or slow breathing, chest pain, a racing or pounding or very slow heartbeat, lips or fingers turning blue or grey, confusion, slurred speech, not being able to stay awake, someone you cannot wake up, a seizure, stiff or jerking muscles, a very high temperature, heavy sweating, throwing up over and over, a swollen face, lips or tongue, a spreading rash, thoughts of hurting yourself, or the plain feeling that something is badly wrong.

If you took too much or took the wrong thing and you are awake and breathing normally, Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222 can tell you what to do. If you are not sure which to call, call 911.

If you are with someone who has taken too much, stay with them, turn them on their side, and call 911. Naloxone (Narcan) reverses an opioid overdose, is sold without a prescription in US pharmacies, and does no harm if opioids turn out not to be the cause.

Stopping suddenly can be as dangerous as taking too much

Cutting back is the point of this app, and there are things it is dangerous to stop all at once. Opioids like oxycodone. Benzodiazepines like Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin or Valium. Alcohol. Some antidepressants, some seizure medicines, some blood pressure medicines, steroids. With some of them, stopping suddenly causes seizures, and people have died from it.

So this app will never tell you to take less. It does not suggest a smaller dose, it does not set a schedule for you, and it has no opinion about your medication. Get a plan for coming down from a doctor, and then use this app to keep to the plan.

The encouragement you will see for cigarettes, vaping and other drugs is not applied to medication for exactly this reason: going without a dose you need is not progress.

What is written down, and who could read it

The app stores your email address, a scrambled form of your password and PIN that cannot be turned back into either of them, your time zone, and every entry you make: what you took, how much, the time, and any details or notes you added.

Names, details and notes are encrypted before they are stored, so a stolen copy of the database is not readable on its own. This is not end-to-end encryption. The key lives on the server, because the server has to unlock your entries to show them back to you. That means someone who runs the server, or who breaks into it, could read your entries. Do not treat this app as a place that nobody can ever see.

Your entries are held in a database run by a hosting company, on computers in the United States. No advertising, no analytics, and nothing sold or shared with anyone, other than the support person you choose yourself.

It is not a medical record and it is not protected the way what you tell a doctor is protected. This is not a HIPAA-covered service. In the United States, records held by a company can be demanded by a court.

Nothing can be edited or deleted, including by you

Once an entry or a note is saved it is permanent. You cannot change it, you cannot remove it, and neither can we: the database itself refuses. The time stamp comes from the server's clock, not from your phone, so it cannot be moved either.

That is on purpose, because a log you can quietly tidy up is a log that stops being any use. It also means you should think for a second before you type something into a detail or a note. Write what will help you. You are not obliged to write anything.

There is one allowance for mistakes. For 10 minutes after you log an entry you can cancel it, for when you picked the wrong one or saved the same thing twice. A cancelled entry stops counting in your totals, your history and anything a support person sees, but it is not erased: it stays stored, marked as cancelled, and the cancelling cannot be undone. After 10 minutes, add a note to it instead.

There is no way to delete your account yet. That work has not been built. If you want your account gone, there is nothing in the app that will do it today.

If you turn the PIN off, or use it for only part of the app

The PIN is what keeps your log private on a phone that is already signed in. With no PIN, anyone who picks up your unlocked phone and opens the app reads everything in it.

You can also have the PIN asked for only when you open your history, or only when you log something. Whatever it does not cover opens for anyone holding your phone. With logging left open they see the names of things you have logged before and can add entries; with history left open they can read your whole log.

Turning it off is allowed, because a lock that is too annoying stops people from logging at all, and a log that gets used is worth more than one that is perfectly locked. It is your call, and you can turn it back on at any time.

If you share with a support person

You can invite up to three people you trust to see a summary. Each of them has to open the link and agree before they see anything at all.

They see how long it has been since your last entry, how many entries you made in the last seven days against the seven before, the longest stretch you have managed, and which kinds you are logging: medication, cigarettes, vaping or other drugs. They do not see the name of anything you take, any amount, any detail, any note, or the time of any single entry.

The invite link is the key. Anyone who has it can see that summary, so send it to that one person and nobody else. You can switch sharing off at any moment from Settings, and the link stops working straight away.

A support person is not a substitute for help in an emergency. They may be asleep. Call 911.

It only knows what you type

Every total, every streak and every chart is built from what you entered. A forgotten entry, a guessed amount or a typo makes all of it wrong, and the app cannot tell.

Do not use it as your only record of something that matters medically. Software goes down, loses data and has bugs, and this app is no exception. Keep anything important written somewhere else as well, and take the real list of what you take to your doctor rather than this screen.

Some other things you should know

The phone numbers in this app are United States numbers. Outside the US they will not reach anyone. Find your local emergency number and your local poison centre before you need them.

If you are under 18, please bring one adult you trust into this with you. A parent, a doctor, a rebbe, a school nurse, a relative. This app is not that adult.

This app is provided as it is, with no warranty of any kind, and it is used at your own risk. It is not for emergencies.