Different brands, different results

[violetta254]

I was taking 10mg of methadone for about a year and it pretty well controlled my RLS. However, my pharmacy switched brands recently and soon my RLS was waking me up 3-4 times a night and I had to do lots of walking, massage, eating, reading etc. to get back to sleep. I was unsure of the connection until I tried a couple of left over methadone 5mg tabs (from an earlier prescription) to make 10 mg and slept all night with no RLS. I have tried this again with the same results. The old tabs work great and the new ones don't even though they supposedly are the same dosage. I am also much wider awake in the morning on the old ones. I don't quite know what to do other than contact the pharmacy. I don't know if they will be able to do anything. They did notify me when they switched brands but I don't even have the paper any more as I didn't note any significance at the time. Has anyone ever had this happen and what did you do about it?

[SueJohnson]

Joolsg had the same problem with buprenorphine. I would check other pharmacies and see if they have your old brand. The problem is even if you find a pharmacy they won't fill a prescription since you just had one filled so in the meanwhile use a jewelry scale and shave off a small portion of your 5 mg tablets and experiment to see how much extra you need to control your RLS and keep doing that until it is time for a new prescription.

[violetta254]

I called my pharmacy, Caremark, and they are going to get me back on the brand I started on that worked. They also contacted my neurologist to get me an interim dose until my next prescription is due. They acted like this is very common, that some generics don't work like other generics from different manufacturers. WTF! How can some manufacturers make defective drugs? So as a heads up, if sometimes you feel like your medication is no longer working, check if the pharmacy changed brands on you. It could be the defective brand and not that the dosage you are taking is now too low and you need to up it.

[SueJohnson in reply to violetta254]

That's great!

[violetta254 in reply to SueJohnson]

except when my doctor sent the script to Caremark, they said it was too soon to fill so still have some work to do.