sxyhairwatch said:
All the time I used to hear spironolactone stinks so bad you won't be able to use it. I've never smelt anything from the batch of S5 I bought. I mean just nothing, it's just a pleasant smell like E45 cream or something.
I'll relate again an incident which actually happened to me several years ago: I'd always heard about the alleged spironolactone smell, too, obviously, but it never particularly bothered me very much. Then one day both of my sisters were here visiting me, and I took that opportunity to test the "spironolactone smell" on THEM. I had some bottles of Dr. Lee's 2% spironolactone that somebody had sent me, so I told them to apply some on the backs of their hands and give it a "test-smell"!
I was amused at the sight of both of them standing there in the kitchen, smelling and sniffing all around the backs of their hands for quite a while!

Ultimately, they BOTH told me that they couldn't detect any unusual smell from it.
I've heard some people speculate over the years that there _may_ be a genetic component to the ability to detect this (alleged) terrible spironolactone smell, which is often described with colorful words like "smells like a skunk's ***". The fact that the poster "sxyhairwatch" and I and my two sisters don't have much of a problem with it seems to lend some support to the theory that maybe it's a genetic thing.