The Barr brand (although I am not aware of it being the BRAND name fo r Adderall) is MOST DEFINITELY different than other generics. I have both Core Pharma and Barr brands of Adderall. The Barr are darker blue, oval shaped and will stain your tongue and teeth if you use it sublingually (melt it under the tongue), which I do sometimes to get a more immediate effect and not have to wait for it to digest and pass through the liver etc etc then start affecting me… say 25-30 minutes later. The Core Pharma generics are lighter blue and perfectly round.
I noticed a HUGE difference between the 2 brands. And because I had both at the same time because my dose was changed and a new script was written prior to running out of the Core Pharma pills. The Barr were far stronger than the Core’s. I am not exaggerating to make a point here. I could not believe how much more jittery and unfocused I became using the Barr brand pills. I found myself unfocused in the sense of remembering what I needed to accomplish for the day; would never get 1/3 of the things written down done, but I would hyper focus on one task. Always an irrelevant task to the day’s important and required ones…a tangent, if you will, ie; I would have to make a couple changes to an ad for my business, like change the dates and update pricing on an existing ad and save it to shoot it out to clients. Instead of doing this (which normally would take about 10-15 minutes) I’d find myself re-creating the entire ad, the pictures I’d send to Photoshop and sit there for more than an hour meddling with the smallest unimportant details of some picture over and over, changing the lighting, the hue, the clarity, the …. You get the idea. Then I’d realize 2+hours had passed and I had a PICTURE in my hands only, when the objective was to change the date and price and move on to other work!
This happened EVERY time I took a Barr branded IR Adderall. My dose, although irrelevant because it’s not about my dosage being too high or too low, it’s about the differences in BRANDS, was 10-15mgs, 2-3 times/day. So be it too much or too little is of no concern – BECAUSE:
As soon as I would switch up to the Core Pharma brand, I would have a totally noticeable and much calmer disposition inside the same time frame as the other brand. I would know what tasks where at hand and on the agenda for the day, and would nearly complete them all. I would catch myself right away if I started to hyper focus on things, such as the ad with the picture (that was doctored up for hours, lol….sorry I’m laughing at myself because looking at the before and after pics, there’s hardly a difference….certainly not one that would affect my business monetarily in any way nor one that anyone would care to notice, lol). But again, I would catch myself before that would happen. So the urge may have still been there but not enough to get me flying off in left field in the corner of the ballpark picking blades of grass with a pair of scissors in a 1×1’ area till the sun set, so to speak.
Now with this information, regarding 2 different generic brands of Adderall, one may conclude that one brand might be stronger than the other, ie; Barr being stronger than Core Pharma in mgs. (There is room for error on mgs on almost all medications to a % +/-. However, I do NOT believe this to be the case, at least with these 2 brands as I have taken at least 1.5 x’s the dosage with the Core Pharma to see if that was the reason for the difference. Instead of finding myself more close to feeling like the Barr brand after increasing the Core Pharma dose, I felt just more energy and a little jittery, (an amount that was too high for myself to “feel normal” if you will) rather than experiencing anything remotely like what the Barr brand created. Very non-scientific, non double blind study, with absolutely no control group type of test to come to this conclusion, lol but I neither had the time to research this nor the power to have a university or clinic confirm my suspicions.
However – At the pharmacy counter, I asked the (non-pharmacist) gal serving me what brand she had on the Adderall last time as I preferred Core Pharma and did NOT like Barr at all. Without hesitation she said “Sir they are the same thing, there is no difference….The government regulates these controlled substances. It’s all in your head”…. Unquote. To my surprise, the Registered Pharmacist, who happened to be standing next to her and serving the guy on the right of me interjected, (and you could tell he was disturbed by what she said, and I believe also because she had said it to me with a definite condescending tone) and explained to me that there are DEFINITE differences in brands regarding that medication. He did not make a blanket statement about all medication I noticed but rather he specifically addressed Adderall. The explanation for the differences as I understood them were: First, the inert ingredients used in different brands are different substances and that can change the effect it has on certain individuals with perceptively noticeable variables. 2nd, that there are a combination of salts (amphetamines) in the drug and that mixture varies depending on the manufacturer and the availability of each, and 3rd, there is an allowance for marginal error on total mgs for these drugs, though he was not able to tell me the % of error tolerated by our FDA. The strangest thing to me was that he said the factor contributing mostly to the perceived difference of effects from brand to brand is governed more so by the binders or inert ingredients more so than the other reasons mentioned. (I would have never thought so). (The lady that snapped at me about my question about what brand they carried was fuming and stomped off to the back of the room murmuring something inaudible under her breath during my education free of charge from the Reg Pharmacist). Yeah I had to laugh inside out of sheer, “take that you b****, and stop advising people of things you’re not qualified to advise on as this could be dangerous in other situations. She also works inside the store that houses this pharmacy at the front register, and is not a pharm tech etc….just a helper. Way out of line telling me ANYTHING of such nature less the things she’s been told to say.
So, too late to make a long story short, but there you have it regarding Adderall and different brands from my experience. Could I be wrong, there’s always a possibility of course. Like I said, I don’t know of any controlled, double blind university or clinical trials of that nature, but I bet there are some somewhere. My opinion is strong in the sense that YES, there ARE differences between brands of Adderall and ones that can be drastic for some people who are hypersensitive to small changes, and for others…nothing perceived. I cannot stand Barr’s generic blend of salts in the 10mg darker blue oval shaped pills. I’d rather go without than take them again. I’ve given them a shot on 3 different occasions, with each time producing the same undesirable effects.
Ask your pharmacist (not your doctor) what brand he/she carries and if there are differences. If you’re not having a good response from what you’re currently on, try a difference manufacturer. What’s it going to hurt? (the “not your doctor) comes from a long record of knowing doc’s personally (I have several friends that are both MD’s and a D.O. and an acquaintance who is an endocrinologist. My great Uncle was head of the Pharmacology department at Cambridge University. I’ve had many times to burn his ear off when he visits the states and stays here with me for a few of the days. Doctor’s get sooooo many spiffs from pharmaceutical reps selling/pushing their drugs. My friend’s wife is a sales rep for a large pharmaceutical company that produces the top SSRI out there right now and she literally gets reprimanded if she doesn’t spend all of her allotted budget for spiffs on the doctors quarterly. This is not chump change, it’s Hawaiian vacations in their 5 star resort timeshares, Bondurant race track driving for the doc and family etc. They are heavily persuaded to push a product on you over another and throw out the door, what’s best for the patient. Not all cave in, but enough do, and I know enough behind the scene stuff to scare anyone out of asking Doc what drug is right for them so to speak. Again, NOT ALL docs.

Different company, different effect, same medication – Final Answer.

As someone had noticed his behaviour not being normal i became more aware of his forgetfulness of walking into a room to get something & coming out without it. He does things wihout realiising the outcome of his actions and being unable to sit without talking to himself & constent moving in the most noticable way. Even whilst waiting in the Dr’s he was up & down.. sitting on the floor & sliding down his chair & became very impatient.. I was prepared to give the Ritalin a go to see if it helped him with his concentration, but on telling his father, he was quiet Negative & made me feel disappointed that i had come to this. So if anyone could give me any advise on if Ritalin is a positive alternative.