take one’s medicine—submit to smth. unpleasant; accept the punishment which one deserves:
- You go back and take your medicine like a man.
take one’s own medicine—(also: take a dose of one’s own medicine) receive treatment of the same disagreeable kind as one has given smb. else:
- Having the polygraph policy mandated by a Congress that doesn’t have the backbone to “take their own medicine” is not a good way to convince people.