To try to understand what was going on I recapped 7 generics and 7 brand name pills so that I couldn’t identify which was which and had my wife give me one at random each day for 14 days with her keeping track of which was given when.
After 14 days I had 100% accuracy identifying the generic vs brand name. Not good.
If you knew that they were generics beforehand, and had preconceived beliefs about generics, your subjective experience of their recreational aspects is severely flawed.
Many of the patients are kids who don't really understand what the difference between generic or name brand pills even is, so its hard to attribute the difference to their beliefs. Many pediatric doctors try to start treatment with generics and then move to the name brand as an alternative to increasing dosage.
If it matters, I remember discovering this because I ended up taking a lot more because I wasn’t feeling them. Only afterwards did I notice they weren’t namebrand.
I wouldn’t say they are poison, but in my experience they often don’t work as well.
One of the best examples is amphetamines. Name brand Adderall and Dexedrine are significantly more potent than the generic alternatives I’ve tried. Maybe this has to do with the binders, or maybe there is less amphetamines in it, I don’t know.
As an anecdote, my dad works as a pharma regulator for the FDA and never takes generic medication. He’s told me that generics are inadequately regulated to ensure equivalency to the original.