There was a time when the first thing a fella did every morning was bless himself and say his prayers. Now the first thing I do is reach for the tablet dispenser and take my daily dose.

While prayer might increase one’s chances of spending eternity in the right place, the doctor and the chemist increase the chances of spending more time at this side of the great divide.

I’m on three tablets daily; there’s a small green one for the blood pressure, a dirty orange one for the cholesterol and, finally, for the waterworks, there’s a yellow one in the shape of a miniature round bale. I hope my drug use will stop at these current levels, but the Doc Doherty tells me that it’s worse things will get from now on.

“By the time you’re 80, you’ll be on an ass-load of the things, so get used to it,” he advised.

In truth, I suppose, most people of my vintage are on a dose of one kind or another, in fact, during my most recent check-up, the Doc said men are slow to look for medical advice and a disaster when it comes to taking medicine as prescribed.

“There was a man from this neck of the woods,” says the Doc, “I think you knew him but patient confidentiality prevents me from disclosing his name. Anyway, he was on much the same dose as yourself, but either he’d forget to take it or he’d take it at the wrong time with the result being that his blood pressure, his cholesterol and his water works were all over the place. I was exasperated with him, but eventually he convinced me he was on top of the situation.”

“How did he get on top of it?” says I.

“I didn’t know this until he passed away,” says the Doc, “but he’d go to Clonmel for the grub on Sundays and eat a full, four-course dinner that included a monster steak. As soon as he’d finish the dessert he’d order a jug of water and swallow the entire week’s dosage of tablets in one go. He lived into his late 90s and I’m always sorry I didn’t ask him to bequeath his corpse to medical science. The drug companies would have paid a fortune to see what concentrated quantities of their products did to the human body.”

On my way home I was reminded of another man who had an odd way of taking his medication. The Hop Houlihan from Shronefodda was a man who kept good greyhounds. However, he had a major distrust of vets, doctors and chemists.

A lot of these individuals also kept greyhounds and he was afraid they might try to use their medical knowledge to nobble his better performing canines. To prevent this, he used a Jack Russell terrier, Rolo, as a guinea pig. When any of the hounds were prescribed medication it was administered first to Rolo. If it didn’t kill him after four days dosing, it was administered to the dog for whom it was originally prescribed.

The Hop’s own health declined in later years and he ended up on all kinds of tablets. He adopted the same tactics with the medicine prescribed for him as he did with the dogs; any new tablet was given to Rolo for a week and if he didn’t keel over he would take the recommended dose. The Hop passed away from cancer in his mid-60s, but Rolo lived to the ripe old age of 25, the equivalent of about 113 years in human terms. The drugs obviously didn’t do him much harm.

When it comes to prescribed medicine, what drives the medical profession mad is tablet swapping between friends and family that’s done without medical advice. I came across this phenomenon myself when I got to know Ronnie and Pamela Spellman, a retired couple from across the water who have settled in Killdicken. Ronnie loves the garden and likes nothing better than to be left alone among his flowers and vegetables.

Recently he was running low on blood pressure tablets and, rather than waste gardening time going to doctor and chemist, unknown to Pam, he began to dip into what he thought was her consignment of blood pressure medication.

It wasn’t long until Pam noticed her supply of HRT dwindling rapidly and, at the same time, her husband’s behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre. He’d go nowhere without a handbag, he stopped watching the Premiership in favour of How to look good naked with Gok Wan and became addicted to The Afternoon Show on RTÉ One. Pam knew she had to take things in hand when he texted the show to say the beard really suited Dáithí Ó Sé, a clear sign of chaotic hormones and low testosterone.

Take your own tablets and do what it says on the tin.