Why the Most Dreaded Injection is Called the 'Peanut Butter' Shot

Every recruit, in the first few weeks of boot camp, will get in a line during their medical evaluations and get stuck in the arm with all sorts of needles and have thermometers shoved into some uncomfortable places.

Welcome to the military!

Out of all the medications recruits get injected with throughout their processing week, none of them are as feared as the almighty "peanut butter" shot.

While these peanut butter shots are awesome, the ones we get in boot camp are far from exciting.

The "peanut butter" shot, in the military, is a slang term for the famous bicillin vaccination every recruit receives unless they have an allergy — and can prove it.

But if you can't, you're in for an experience of a lifetime. You'll be brought into an examination room, usually as a group, and be told to drop your trousers past one of your butt cheeks and bend over.

Once the recruit has assumed their most vulnerable position, the medical staff will attach a long and thick needle to a pre-filled vial of bicillin.

Since bicillin kills off a variety of bacteria strands in one shot, it's given to nearly every recruit.

Now, once the medical staff injects the recruits in their butt cheek, the pain hits them like a bolt of electricity. The thick liquid begins to pour into the muscle, but it doesn't spread as fast as you might think.

Oh, no!

The human body absorbs the thick, peanut-butter looking medication at a slow rate because of the liquid's density and creates a painful, red lump on the recruit's ass.

You literally can't sit right for a few days. Since some boot camps require their recruits to be highly active, the idea of adding intense physical movement to the shot's excruciating pain just adds to the "peanut butter" shot's awfulness.

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