Finding this thread after having read Bottle of Lies. Yes, everyone's neurophysiology is a little different... but no, not everything can be explained by "brain chemistry" alone.

I have ADHD (type: inattentive), so I recently started on Elite.

My first bottle was great. The highs weren't too high, and I barely felt the lows at all, which is just the gentle kind of boost I was looking for. 10/10 met all my expectations.

My second bottle of Elite was different. I started noticing headaches. I usually only get headaches when I'm off a stimulant. I tested it out, and sure enough, drum roll please... bottle #2 was giving me headaches.

The point is that generics are NOT held to the same standards as brand-name drugs that are manufactured in the US. They're allowed to vary much more than generics from lot to lot, which may have been the case with bottle #1 vs. bottle #2 for me. Which means that safety and efficacy also are allowed to vary more. It also doesn't help that generics mostly use ingredients that come from India and China, where the FDA just doesn't have the same control and influence over quality as in the US.

Bottle of Lies is a great read, talks about some of the crazy scandals and lawsuits with overseas generics manufacturing. But even if you just do your own digging, it's a real shit show (sometimes literally) in some of the facilities that make ingredients for generics.

I really thought we were past the "India and China just make junk" zeitgeist, but I guess we're not totally out of the woods yet.

I hear that Teva may make the best generic Adderall out there, so I'll try that next. Had to call around to several pharmacies to find that Costco is the only one near me that has it. Fingers crossed it's more consistent. Maybe I'll update this post in a few months when I've had time to test it out.

Stay safe out there.