Well, I’m not in a situation where I can go otc for headaches. I’m already using acetaminophen (paracetamol for the brits) non stop for chronic pain, and I have to save ibuprofen for stuff that never responds to other pain control methods because I’m an old fuck and I’m not supposed to take it at all, and it causes problems when I ignore that and take it anyway.

Luckily, my headaches almost always stem from stress and/or muscle tension in my neck, so it’s very rare they don’t respond to non chemical methods, and I happen to have prescription meds that are prn for those things if I want/need.

But, for headaches, I used to find caffeine more effective than analgesics, nsaid or otherwise. Even when I wasn’t drinking caffeine regularly (which means I know that it wasn’t just caffeine withdrawal causing the headache to begin with), a cup of coffee usually got rise of a headache faster and more thoroughly than NSAIDs.

But it was usually acetaminophen that would be my first pick when I went the OTC pill route. Less likely to irritate my already irritating bowel syndrome issues.

Tbh though, none of the OTC analgesics are great at getting rid of a headache. Some of the older studies and double blind tests I saw put them about the same as placebo for headaches, though that’s been years since I looked up anything about it.