Today's tales from the pharmacy includes a lady yelling at my pharmacist saying quote "You're pharmacist! You should know these are not the same drugs!" And my pharmacist responds "Yeah, I am a pharmacist! And I'm telling you those are the same medications!"

She was arguing about like how she wanted like brand concerta and saying how it wasn't the same as generic methylphenidate er, eesh

And then she demanded to talk to the manager and my manager was like "I am the manager." "No you're not! You are not the manager." "Yes, I am the manager! And you can go elsewhere to get your medications, thank you. You can leave now!"

in fairness, I'm pretty sure I have heard claims from not-crazy people that in some cases generics are less effective than some of the notionally equivalent branded drugs, because differences in notionally non-active ingredients can make a difference to how the body responds. I've no idea whether any such thing is credibly alleged specifically about Concerta versus generic methylphenidate.

@GarethMcCaughan This is true, and I've read a couple of articles on people claiming that generic methylphenidate isn't as effective as brand Concerta

And to that I say that's a load of baloney because I've been on generic for years now

To each their own, and I don't want to minimize anyone's experiences, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that the vast majority of people will be okay on most generics

if there are not-obviously-crazy people saying it then it's hard to blame someone too much for believing them. also, (1) drugs can affect different people differently in a million weird ways and (2) have you actually done some sort of blinded comparison to see whether the generic methylphenidate is the same as branded Concerta for you?

I don't think anyone is claiming that the generics simply don't work.

But "I've been on the generic for years and it seems to work for me" isn't much evidence against (1) some specific formulation being 10% better for everyone or (2) some specific formulation being 2x better for 10% of people.

So I've been on both, when generic methylphenidate was backordered my insurance was nice enough to let me take brand without making a hooplah (thanks dad) and I didn't notice much of a difference aside from the brand actually giving me worse side effects when it came to appetite and being able to digest things

(for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not claiming that anything of that sort actually is true, only that so far as I can tell it's plausible enough that if a customer says they want a particular brand there might be some merit in trying to accommodate them)

and of course the placebo effect is a thing, so even if there is literally zero difference in what two nominally identical products do biochemically one might work better for a particular patient than another because of that...

I'm of course not discrediting the fact that a patient claiming X brand works better for them is like trying to be deceptive. Even if it's placebo, it still doesn't change the fact that it works better for that patient. I think that's perfectly valid

However, from a pure pharmaceutical perspective, brand and generic are the same medications, because we're talking about active ingredients. I don't know the full scope of the situation because I came into it while I returned from my lunch break, but I don't think she was claiming that it wasn't working

having said all of which, the specific not-crazy person I thought I remembered saying they'd seen evidence for some sort of "branded better than generic" effect in a particular case doesn't in fact seem to have said that -- though they did say they had a patient "who swears that only brand-name Adderall works for him, generics make him feel terrible"; dunno whether that's what I was thinking of, or whether my recollection is of someone else entirely, or whether I just imagined it wholesale :-).

yeah, "can you please sell me X instead of Y even though they're nominally equivalent?" is one thing and "I think X is better than Y, so I demand that you do such-and-such a very specific thing you're probably not allowed to do" is entirely another :-).

Exactly

There's people that say that only a specific manufacturer works for them, and we respect that and try to fill that manufacturer (or order it for them)

There's a regular patient we have that only takes branded medications and wants them in their sealed bottles instead of amber vials

No biggie

But "different drugs" is like... the difference between Concerta, Ritalin LA because they have different ways the drug is released into your body. Even though they're both long acting versions methylphenidate, their delivery is different

anyway, speaking of stimulants, it's 5am local time and I should go to bed :-).

(no, I'm not up late because I'm on drugs that stop me sleeping, I'm just terrible at going to bed)

Stop taking drugs Gareth

reminds me of a joke by zach weinersmith

BAHAHAHAH

Urghhh I feel like I'm on the verge of a clever clue but I can't quite get it to work

I was gonna do "Short even number (5)" for S+EVEN to be cheeky, but it was just too easy

It's funny but it's not hard

CCCC: Poem about talking shepherds ending with a tailless pig exchanged for a chicken’s head (7)

I'm pretty proud of this one

sounds like a wild one, lol

:)

@PrinceNorthLæraðr TIL the word eclogue (poem about talking shepherd(s)) = epilogue (ending) with pi(-g) exchanged for c(hicken)

And now this is my chance to share my favorite piece of music (probably ever??)

This is how I learned that ECLOGUE was a word

I heard this piece on the radio about (wow I guess it has been like 3 years? ago??) and absolutely fell in love with it

I would HIGHLY recommend everyone here listen to it

:O

CCCC: Western Asian leader fell down in disastrous event as depicted in official cover (10)

(studying for a test in 6 days using a textbook and two past papers, staying up to 11 to revise cuz i flunked my first two tests, life is definitely going great) like i actually am starting to despise school

@Stevo 😭

MD5 hash of answer (fully lowercase): 7757b192608ebf9facfc458362d5da80

@Jafe that's a joke?