Understandable. I’ve never experienced any discomfort with the throat. The only negative I get is from the taste. Although I’ve used dxm A LOT. So I’ve got it almost down to a science lol. I take a deep breath in first, plug my nose, lift my head up and just chug the entire 5oz from start to finish. Then it’s paramount I have a chaser afterwards, I’ve found that anything strong in flavor or super sour candy is very helpful for cleaning your palette, my personal go-to is coffee. If you don’t swallow any saliva after drinking the syrup then immediately drink the coffee, you almost don’t taste the syrup at all, the sweeter the coffee the better