I'm Totally Generic

I feel like I've been hit by a brick today, but I thought I would share something. 

I was looking for different antihistamines from the ones I got from Tesco (something beginning with L, don't quote me, but they're not effective for me at the moment), and thought I would get some from Amazon as there is no way I'll be out of the house tomorrow. 

Did you know that a lot of over the counter medicines have big brand versions and generic versions.  My brother knows about this sort of thing, and I vaguely remember seeing something on tv, but apparently you can check the packaging and see what the active ingredient is.  So, a cough drop would not be equivalent to an antihistamine, but piriteze allergy tablets and allacan certirizine both contain 10mg of certirizine hydrochloride (I really hope I'm spelling these right, but I'm still running a temperature so please do your own checks),  Piriteze is £4.70 for twelve tablets and allacan is £4.69 for 180 tablets.  There may be a glitch going on, but as far as I can tell, if you order the allacan, that's the price for the quantity. 

The 'fillers', which are the stuff that takes the 10mg of active ingredient and makes it into a tablet, can vary which is why you should always check before switching down, but it is worth knowing about it, if you do all the right checks.  However, if there is no issue, then both types have identical active ingredients but at very different prices. 

I ordered the piriteze.  I'm only going to be taking antihistamines while the cold lasts and don't want hundreds of tablets lying around until they go out of date, and the piriteze will get here tomorrow and the allacan will be a few days - and I am desperate. I will, however, be checking active ingredients in future. 

I'm sure that most reading this will know, and I usually get bear the generic painkillers on the advice of the doctor, but I didn't realise how big the price gap could get.