So I fell sick (again!) on Friday. Stuffy and runny nose, sore throat, headache – exactly the kind of symptoms Nyquil advertises for. Only, instead of the real deal, I found a generic brand nightime cold medicine in my medicine cabinet (I must have bought it last time I was sick, but hadn’t had the pleasure of using it because I must have gotten better while the previous bottle of Nyquil was still there).
I took it on Friday night, and instead of the usual drifting into Nyquil induced sleep, I had a very disturbed and restless night. So the first thing I did on Saturday was to go out and get a bottle of real Nyquil. And guess what. I just woke up after 14 hours of as restful of a sleep as you can get with a cold.
On comparison, both medicines have the same active ingredients, but Nyquil contains alcohol which the generic brand does not contain. So, in theory, they both should have done a similar job, but I thought Nyquil was at least twice as effective as the other one. So, what do you think? Is this all in my mind? Or do brand name stuff actually work better than generic?
