Living With Pain: The Human Cost of Inconsistent Generic Opioids

FACT CHECKED

In November 2025, MedShadow published INVESTIGATING GENERICS: Decades of Recalls Reveal Flaws in the U.S. Opioid Supply Chain, investigating quality issues with opioid medications for pain and substance use disorders. Our reporting found that opioid recalls accounted for 5.42% of all drug recalls over the past 20 years, and, in several cases, the recalls followed FDA inspections that had uncovered serious quality problems months earlier.

The response has been striking: hundreds of comments on TikTok and numerous emails from people describing their own experiences with low-quality opioids. Many said their medications wore off far sooner than expected or failed to ease their pain at all. We spoke in depth with several of those individuals. [To respect their privacy, we did not request medical records or provider contact information, and are only using their first names.]

While the overprescribing of opioids has been cited as a contributing factor fueling the opioid epidemic, experts emphasize that these medications remain necessary for some people, including those with severe pain that does not respond to other treatments and those being treated for opioid use disorder. Despite the essential nature of these medications, many people say they’re reluctant to tell their healthcare providers when they suspect their opioids aren’t working for fear they’ll be labeled as medication-seeking and lose their prescription. 

Fran

Diagnosis: lower back pain
Current Prescription: 5mg hydrocodone three times per day
Age: 60s
Location: Tennessee

Fran, now in her 60s, has lived with chronic lower back pain since her first pregnancy, when symptoms linked to an extra vertebra in her spine first emerged.

She says she’s been taking 5 mg of hydrocodone three times a day for the past seven years. But within the last two years, Fran says she’s noticed that some months the medication seems to work better than others.

Last year, she says, the inconsistency became so noticeable that she felt as though she was experiencing withdrawal and sent her husband back to the pharmacy to ask the pharmacist about it. Unfortunately, she learned that once a prescription leaves the pharmacy, it can’t be exchanged for a different version.

These days, Fran says that when she gets a prescription that feels like it works well, she can do regular household tasks like cooking and shopping, but when her medication doesn’t seem to be working, she can barely keep up with day-to-day functioning. Even something as simple as her daily hygiene is affected, she says. 

Asha 

Diagnosis: Stage 4 endometriosis, fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis, unexplained joint pain
Current Prescription: 15mg extended-release morphine and 5-325 mg oxycodone with acetaminophen
Age: 47
Location: Colorado

Asha says she used to take methadone for long-acting pain relief, but in August 2024, her doctor switched her to a combination of extended-release morphine for long-lasting relief and shorter-acting oxycodone with acetaminophen. 

Since August, Asha says she’s cycled through three different manufacturers of extended-release morphine, and none have delivered the promised 12 hours of relief. She takes her dose at 10 p.m. before bed, with the expectation that it will last through the night until morning — but it rarely does.

Asha says she doesn’t remember the names of the first two manufacturers she received, but neither seemed to last more than eight hours. She remembers waking up around 4:30 a.m. in extreme pain five nights a week, sometimes waking as early as 2:00 AM. 

After discussing the problem with her doctor, Asha says he prescribed her an extra daily dose of the short-acting medication to take in the middle of the night if she needed it. 

For the last four months, Asha says she has received extended-release morphine made by Mallinckrodt. It doesn’t last the full 12 hours, she says, but it lasts longer than the first two manufacturers did. Now, she says she only wakes up about one night a week in pain. 

While her doctor agreed to write “Mallinckrodt only” on her prescription, Asha knows that with ongoing shortages, there’s a good chance she’ll still have to settle for a different manufacturer some months. “Ultimately, I have to take whatever I can get,” she says, adding, ”I can’t just up and transfer my prescriptions to a different chain that might be better at keeping it in stock, because I have a good relationship with the pharmacists and techs at the pharmacy I go to. That takes a lot of time to build, and I may not be so lucky at the next one.”

Diann

Current Prescription: Oxycodone and acetaminophen 10-325mg
Diagnosis:  Degenerative disc disease, herniated disks, osteoarthritis, spondylitis (inflammation of the vertebrae), hernias, recurring abdominal pain
Age: Not Provided
Location: Pennsylvania

When Diann told her doctor that she felt like Camber Pharmaceutical’s oxycodone and acetaminophen 10-325mg — which is supposed to last 4-6 hours — frequently provided her with less than two hours of relief, she was told she had built up a tolerance to the medication. That conflicted with her experiences in the hospital, where she would occasionally admit herself during bouts of severe abdominal pain and vomiting that made it impossible to keep oral medications down. Sometimes, she says, doctors gave her intramuscular or intravenous pain medication. Other times, they restarted the same medications she took at home but from a different manufacturer — and her pain eased.

On one occasion, when she went to the emergency room with a pain flare-up, Diann says the doctor accused her of lying about her pain, implied she must have run out of her medication early, and claimed she must have been seeking more because she was experiencing withdrawal. Diann says she was discharged within 20 minutes. 

Thankfully, her primary care doctor believed her. He told Diann he’d heard similar complaints about a variety of generic drugs over the years, and theorized that some might be low-quality. The owner of the small, local pharmacy she uses believed her, too. Diann says he told her he didn’t want any of his patients receiving ineffective medications, and he’d try to order from companies other than Camber. 

Ultimately, Diann says her story has a current happy ending: “I’m happy to report that the pharmacist was able to obtain them from another pharmaceutical company and they have been effective.”

Justin

Diagnosis: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
Age: 43
Location: Virginia
Current Prescription: Oxycodone 30mg

Justin says he relied on 30 milligrams of oxycodone every four hours for almost three years to control the pain of his Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that can cause a variety of symptoms, including chronic pain. Every now and then, he says he noticed inconsistencies: a refill that faded too quickly, or one that suddenly didn’t “cut through the pain” the way the previous month’s had. Seeking a solution, he asked the manager at his pharmacy for help. 

Justin says the manager told him that he was not the only person to complain about a particular manufacturer of oxycodone (which he says can’t remember the name of now), and was able to order medication from a brand that seemed to work better.

He has since switched medications. “This new medication is working fantastically,” he says, adding that his bad days are “fewer and farther between.” 

A retired chef, when Justin’s medications are effective, he says he spends his time cooking and keeping his home in order. When they aren’t, he says, he’s unable to do much at all.

What to Do if You Think Your Generic Medication Isn’t Working

It’s important to note that a perceived change in effectiveness doesn’t always point to a problem with a generic opioid medication. Sometimes, interactions with other prescribed medications or supplements can affect opioid metabolism, potentially reducing pain relief. Additionally, variables like stress, sleep quality, inflammation, or other underlying health conditions can make pain feel worse or less responsive to treatment at times.

However, as our reporting and reader experiences suggest, when a generic opioid suddenly doesn’t seem to work the way it once did, that change shouldn’t be dismissed.

To keep yourself as safe as possible, every time you pick up a new prescription from your pharmacy, take note of the manufacturer. It’s usually on the bottle, but if you don’t see it, you can ask your pharmacist. Write it down, along with the date you picked it up. Then, as you use it, write down notes about how well it works, how long it lasts, and any new side effects you might notice. Detailed tracking and notes will help you make your case to your doctor or pharmacist.

If you do notice a difference in effectiveness or an increase in side effects, report the change to MedWatch, the FDA’s adverse events reporting database. The FDA tracks trends in reports to this database, and an uptick in problems with a particular medication can trigger further investigation.

When discussing generic medication issues with your doctor, consider showing them stories such as this one: INVESTIGATING GENERICS: Decades of Recalls Reveal Flaws in the U.S. Opioid Supply Chain, along with your personal notes. This can be especially helpful if your physician is unaware of the scope of the problem. 

Lastly, Ryan Marino, M.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry specializing in addiction medicine and medical toxicology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, adds that if your doctor or pharmacist isn’t receptive to the conversation, it’s time to consider a new provider.

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