What’s The Best OTC Sleep Aid?
Posted July 24, 2008 by Mister Knowitall

Fred asks: Are generic non-prescription sleeping pills as good as name brand? I use Tylenol Simply Sleep, but friends tell me I’m wasting money.

Fred, your friends are right. And here’s why.

Aside from herbal sleep aids which aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, there are only two chemical formulations you’re going to find in non-prescription sleeping pills. The most common of these is diphenhydramine, otherwise known by it’s brand name… Benadryl.

Tylenol Simply Sleep is Benadryl with a different packaging. Tylenol PM is Tylenol plus Benadryl. About 90% of the sleep aids on the shelves are just 25-50 milligrams of Benadryl in different boxes with different shapes and sizes to the pills. If you read the active ingredients list, they’ll be the same: 25-50 milligrams of duphenhydramine per pill.

The other sleep aid is also an antihistamine, known as doxylamine succinate. You’ll find it in some of the house-brand generics, plus Unisom tablets (the Unisom gels use diphenhydramine). Doxylamine is used around the world as a sleep aid, and also paired with other components for tension headache and morning sickness remedies. If you’ve ever been knocked out by a dose of NyQuil, the knock-out component was doxylamine.

Both of these drugs have been around a long time, their manufacturing processes are well known, and there’s no good reason to think that Tylenol’s diphenhydramine is of significantly better quality than a bottle of Equate Allergy Medicine from Walmart. The Simply Sleep and the Equate Allergy Medicine are the same exact thing, only the Equate is a lot cheaper.