No I meant it exactly as I wrote it, without any judgement. Aspirin is just used as a generic term for painkiller by a lot of people, and until like 10-20y ago it was also the most common thing. I'd say most people are migrating to Ibuprofen these days for stuff like "I have a headache that's not killing me" but people still say Aspirin, usually followed up by a question if whatever is available is ok...
In the US, Tylenol is the term commonly used instead of acetaminophen (Tylenol has been a major brand name for acetaminophen for many decades and is quite prevalent) and I thought perhaps you had Aspirin and Tylenol mixed up. I've never actually heard someone refer to Tylenol as Aspirin, and I've never heard of Aspirin being a generic term for painkiller, so I attempted to come up with what I had thought might be a more plausible explanation based on my experiences.
Took a while until I grasped what Sudafed is because afaik it's not even on the market here and never has been. There was some sort of Pseudoephedrin pill I actually took against hayfever a while ago, but not the standard "clogged nose because cold thing" (please excuse if I described Sudafed poorly, but see above) :)
It's very common for the older generations to call any pain or fever medicine "aspirin" and for the younger generations to call it "Tylenol".
I tend to be specific, but I still use "Tylenol" instead of "acetaminiphen" because few people would know what I meant if I used the latter. "Ibuprofen" is commonly used enough that I use that term, but I've heard people refer to it as "Motrin" almost as often. Almost no one would know what I meant if I asked for "naproxen" instead of "Aleve".
I live in the South, and the above may or may not be true elsewhere. It's definitely not limited to mediciations, either. Where I live if someone offers you a Coke and you accept, there's a good chance you're going to get a Pepsi, a Sprite, or some other arbitrary carbonated beverage.
