This Candy Is the Only Thing That Helped My Terrible “Paxlovid Mouth”

If you know anyone who’s taken Paxlovid, a popular prescription treatment for COVID-19, you’ve probably heard talk of an awful side effect: the Paxlovid aftertaste. But “awful” is an understatement. And, really, so is “aftertaste,” because it’s not just a bad flavor that lingers on your tongue for a few minutes after swallowing a pill—it’s a disgusting, invisible monster that occupies your entire mouth for five straight days.

Paxlovid is an antiviral treatment in the form of a five-day pill pack, and though it comes with the unfortunate mouth monster, I’m still strongly pro. In December, Paxlovid was authorized for emergency use by the FDA for mild to moderate cases of COVID, and it’s recently become more widely available. While it won’t cure COVID, it can make symptoms less severe, and in clinical studies it drastically reduced hospitalization rates.

Other than the possibility of what the CDC calls “COVID-19 Rebound” (symptoms reappearing after completing the Paxlovid course), the most common side effects include an altered sense of taste, digestive issues, high blood pressure, and muscle aches. Those are all preferable to many of the COVID horror stories I’d heard and read, so when I finally tested positive a few days after my unvaccinated toddler picked up the virus from daycare, I texted my husband a picture of my positive test with an impressive series of expletives. Then I called my doctor to request Paxlovid.

The COVID symptoms started to hit me hard right around the time my mother-in-law dropped my prescription on my front porch, so I immediately popped the first three-pill dose. It certainly wasn’t good—similar to an uncoated aspirin but more bitter—and washing it down with a lemon LaCroix only intensified the bitterness. I didn’t think much of it, though, figuring the flavor would fade quickly. Instead it morphed into something worse. So much worse. Others have described it as “metallic grapefruit” and I guess that’s accurate if you also throw in notes of “dry dog food” and “over-stuffed dumpster on a hot summer day.”

I chugged water to try and wash away whatever was happening in my mouth and went about the business of trying to remain upright until I could put my kids to bed and take up semi-permanent residence on the couch. But the horrendous taste remained, no matter what I ate or how much water I drank or how many times I brushed my teeth or even used my favorite magic mouthwash. At some point, I stumbled into the kitchen to take my second Paxlovid dose of the day (which was just as foul as the first) and went to bed. I fell asleep right away, but the taste was so horrid that it woke me up in the middle of the night. Twice.

By the next morning, the fever and chills had passed and my short-lived cough was gone, too. Thanks to modern medicine, after one night’s sleep I had gone from feeling like death to feeling like I had a bad cold. But notes of death remained in my mouth. Sure, I was fatigued and had a dull headache, mild muscle pain, and a constantly runny nose, but I hardly noticed any of that because my senses were completely overwhelmed by the putrid, bitter taste of Paxlovid. And I still had four more days to go. It was so unbearable that I—a person who lives to eat and writes about food and cooking—began to wish for the variety of COVID that would make me lose my sense of taste and smell.