IT’S HARD TO appear poised amidst the sniffles and snorts of allergy season. Sneezing your way around town — embarrassing dribbles here, unsightly redness there — how, you may sigh, could allergies be cause for anything but horror? Well, like a bad cold, they can offer an excuse to take extra-special healing measures, buy extra-special soft tissues, and win extra-special TLC.

A new study from the University of Iowa shows that getting behind the wheel under the influence of over-the-counter allergy meds like Benadryl can be more dangerous than doing so sauced on booze. And considering that 40 million Americans suffer from hay fever, that’s no insignificant fact. But alternatives abound to avoid the drowsiness, drugginess, and general blahs brought on by mainstream allergy drugs.

The aptly named Gazoontite.com is a Web site devoted to making life just a little more tolerable for allergy and asthma sufferers. The site — there are also “brick-and-mortar” stores in three cities nationwide — offers such scary clinical apparatus as the Rinoflow Nasal Wash and the Narial Nasal Cup; but we were more interested in the friendly-sounding Allergy Eye Kit ($40), which includes a sea-kelp mask, chamomile-enriched cream, and eye pads saturated with aloe vera and tea to “soothe, decongest, and conceal” under-eye darkness resulting from “allergies, sinus, or just plain heredity.” Another option at Gazoontite.com is Aromafloria Herbal Therapy Sinus Help inhalation beads ($8), yellow mini-capsules with eucalyptus, peppermint, and lemongrass, which you can tote around and occasionally sniff to clear up those clogged passages. The upscale home store Restoration Hardware sells a Cold and Sinus Soak ($16), a big, plastic drawstring bag of finely crushed sinus-declogging eucalyptus powder to sprinkle in your bathtub (claw-foot tub works best).

Pamela Bemis, an acupuncturist in Roslindale, specializes in ridding patients of food and environmental allergies through Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET), a method discovered in California by ... Dr. Nambudripad. Normally, Bemis says, she can improve symptoms of even the strongest allergic reactions within 10 to 15 treatments ($75 for initial session; $55 thereafter).

Assuming none of that works and the dribbles persist, Brooks Brothers Baker’s Half-Dozen Cotton Handkerchiefs ($20 for seven) are soft 18-inch squares of fancy, finely detailed nose-blowing equipment that make the gross drools and slobbers a sort of special occasion.

• Pamela Bemis, 637 South Street, Roslindale, (617) 327-3089

• Brooks Brothers, 46 Newbury Street, Boston, (617) 267-2600; 199 Boylston Street, Chestnut Hill Mall, Newton, (617) 964-3600

• www.gazoontite.com; (800) 4MY-NOSE

• Restoration Hardware, 711 Boylston Street, Boston (617) 578-0088

Issue Date: May 31- June 7, 2001