Let's Sleep One Off

April 17, 2008 – 7:59 am

If you suffer from insomnia that's not bad enough for a prescription, but you do take non-prescription pills you can buy at the pharmacy, you may find today's Rough Equivalents very interesting. You see, all of these are roughly equivalent:

• Tylenol Simply Sleep - 100 tablets ($11.79* - 23.6 cents per 2-pill dose)
• Rite-Aid Nite Time Sleep Aid - 100 mini-tabs ($4.99* - 10 cents per 2-pill dose)
• Benadryl Allergy Relief - 100 "ultratab" tablets ($14.49* - 29 cents per 2-pill dose)

* pricing at drugstore.com at time of writing

How are those all roughly equivalent? They're not, really. They're exactly equivalent. All of those pills have the same exact amount of the same exact medicine, diphenhydramine. Diphenhydramine was the first FDA approved presciption antihistamine back in 1946... and it has the side effect of making you drowsy.

What I find interesting is that after the success of Tylenol PM, McNeil Consumer Healthcare introduced Tylenol Simply Sleep in 1999. It was basically Tylenol PM without the Tylenol, but they projected over $50 million in sales by the end of 2000.

Now I don't know what they sold it for in 2000, but I know what they sell it for now. If we take the ratio of the Simply Sleep price to the Rite Aid generic sleep aid price and apply it to that $50 million in sales, we can say that people who bought Simply Sleep overspent on sleep aids by $28,813,559.32 in 1999 and 2000.

Some sleep-related Rough Equivalents for that wasted $28,813,559.32 include:

• 360,214 memory foam mattress toppers.
• 1,449,374 Sound Spa relaxation sound machines.
• 1,976,238 large mallets.
• 204,331 sheep (based on a cost of $144.61 CAD for a market lamb).

What Rough Equivalents can you come up with for $28,813,559.32 wasted on sleeping pills?