Methadone/methadose Discontinued?

I have been taking Methadose for 4 years and recently the shape of the pills was changed and they do not give me any pain relief. What could be the reason? The pharmacists say all other forms of Methadone and Methadose have been discontinued. Is that true?

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Well when a drug is available for generic manufacture, there are literally hundreds of companies that can make it, which you get from your pharmacy depends on which they were able to get cheapest.

Now, unfortunately, even though they try to tell you that generics are exactly the same as the name brand, the truth is that they aren't!

The law allows them to differ by as much as plus or minus 20% in the active ingredient, so a company that isn't really strictly picky about their products could provide a pill labeled 100mgs and you could really be only getting 80mgs or maybe 120mgs. Thus, sometimes, you just don't get the dose you need, so that may be why these aren't working for you as well as the others did.

It is actually against the law for your doctor or pharmacist to tell you this fact about generic meds, they can lose their license for telling you anything other than they are identical. The reasoning for this from our government is that they do not want to scare people away from taking needed medications, however, you can easily see how that 40% window could cause problems with meds that are precisely dosed or that need to be strictly calibrated.

Here is an article I found that explains this difference and the relevant law that permits it:

Generic Drugs the Truth

Please speak to your doctor, you can usually have them put Brand medically necessary on your prescriptions if a generic does not work for you, since even inactive ingredients can sometimes have an effect on how well a drug works for you, or you can try calling various pharmacies in your area and perhaps a different one will have the other generic that you are used to using and know works for you.

As to Hank's comments, he is not authorized by the site and has no clue what our forum is really for or what we do here.

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I also find it hard to believe that ALL others have been discontinued, it is possible that the other brand they carried was discontinued, but I am betting if you speak to your doctor or talk to a different pharmacy, you will find it available from other companies.

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Verwon (# 2) Not true about generic meds can be off 10%-20%. If that was true many important medications would be ineffective. Such as antibiotics and antivirals, chemotherapy medications, etc.. people would die. It is an urban myth about generics. Generics are cheaper because the companies didn't spend millions of dollars inventing the drug, clinical trials, etc... it takes an average of ten years to bring a new medication to market. That is the reason why brand name meds get a 17 year patent on the medication. To recoup all of the money that they put into it and make a nice profit. Generic companies didn't do anything but wait 17 years for the patent to expire so that is the reason why generic are available are cheaper than brand name.

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