As someone who takes an ADHD medication, I find the idea of a drug shortage terrifying. Life gets so, so much harder when I’m unmedicated.
It’s like the difference between walking on a sidewalk and walking in sucking mud, with stuff falling out of your pockets you have to keep going back to find. You build a life that’s only possible thanks to your ability to walk on sidewalks. If you suddenly find you can only get around by walking through mud, even with a huge amount of will power, you’re going to watch your life fall apart as you just can’t keep up the pace of your old life.
Very early in my life I told my dad I wanted off of Ritalin because it didn’t feel sustainable for me. So when I was about 8 or 9 I chose to try to create mental tools to deal with ADHD over medication. I don’t know if it worked as well. It’d be nice to have a prescription that worked for me. I went to try other prescriptions a few times and never felt like they worked for me. I might try to go back to Ritalin but with the shortage it feels pointless to try to do.
As a fellow ADD-haver, I advocate for you to continue trying new medications. Studies show that ADD/ADHD responds to medicine better than almost any other psychiatric disorder, even if it sometimes requires multiple revisions or a cocktail to achieve the desired effect.
If you’re intrigued, I will refer you to this lecture by Dr. Barkley. The entire lecture is valuable, though I recognize that asking someone to watch 60+ minutes of jargon is not overly helpful! To make things easier – if you’ll pardon my layman’s editorializing – I’ve curated a list of specifically relevant timestamps:
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Stimulants, including new formulations and delivery systems
The neurobiology of executive dysfunction and the neuroprotective argument for seeking medication
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The Piped version of the video is very much failing to load for me. Does anyone happen to know why?
It appears to be a Piped outage. Both the homepage and video links are loading slowly and frequently seem to outright fail.
Hell, the US shortage is so bad my usual pharmacy told me they wouldn’t be honoring my prescription, everyone I called refused to answer if they could and would usually just hang up on me, and my Dr refused to help find someone
Kinda don’t blame the UK if it’s anything like that there
One of my kids just started on 2 different medications in Canada and we had no problem. Wouldn’t have even thought there were shortages elsewhere
It’s because of how your province negotiated the contract for the drugs. I guarantee that there’s language in there that has penalties if there’s supply problems.
Countries that don’t negotiate drug prices/contracts are the ones that are suffering with shortages.
Insert Morpheus meme about people’s worst fears about socialism being realized under capitalism.
Thanks for the info. Sorry that’s happening where you live
I find this strange as well. While the producer of my meds has changed several times, I’ve never had to wait or go without at any point in time.
I had a 2 week period without a job and swapped insurance because of the new job offering it through a different service
Same Dr, same pharmacy, same pharmacist, yet the whole thing was treated like I was new at the pharmacy because of the insurance change
I personally think they were looking for any reason to drop people because they simply didn’t have enough to supply all of us rather than just admit that
Dunno why so many other pharmacies were outright rude to me when I called but that’s what a friend also experienced so my guess is stress over the situation or shitty callers who get angry
In my experience, hospital pharmacies tend to be really good for filling out stimulant prescriptions. The shortage issue basically comes down to Schedule-II quotas and those are generally set per-pharmacy based on patient volume vs. controlled substance fulfillments.
This unfortunately means that low-volume convenience pharmacies tend to hit their quota maximum rather easily. Hospital pharmacies on the other hand tend to get fewer visits related to chronic conditions (e.g.: ADD/ADHD) and obviously have way more patient volume than the average Walgreens, so they’re a lot more likely to vend to you without putting up a big fight.
Unfortunately my experience with my insurance provider (Kaiser) has been a refusal to respect my out of network diagnosis and insist that I get rediagnosed through them, a process which will take months as my GP refers me to a psych who are all booked for 3 months minimum
The other hospital in the area also refused to fill due to the shortage
I fucking hate this system and have had 3 doctors agree with me on that
I’d also like to point out that Kaiser cut me emergency supply of these same fucking meds at the order of that doctor after I was in the ER and didn’t have them on me so like wtf
Maybe the UK should join the US in importing all their pharmaceuticals from China: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-10/fda-allows-more-cancer-drug-imports-from-china-amid-shortage
This is the actual solution, and I’m not sure why I’m getting so many downvotes from it. Clearly, purely capitalist markets aren’t enough to sustain a decent pharmaceuticals industry.
Omg!! Next they may be importing them from INDIA!!! /s
In which world is the Chinese market not capitalist? Chinese drug exports are absolutely for-profit. They don’t export out of philanthropy. It’s probably even worse than elsewhere!
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Thanks for your insightful contribution!
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Fentanyl is manufactured for medical use in the massive and extremely lucrative US market. The fact that American drug cartels import it for sale on the black market is an unfortunate side-effect.
The solution to the opioid epidemic is stupidly simple: enable safe supply so that addicts don’t have to destroy their lives in pursuit of their addiction. That, by the way, is an addiction created by US pharmaceutical companies forcing doctors to overprescribe opioids despite knowing how addicting they are.
China doesn’t have to wage shadow warfare when the US is happy to do so to itself.
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I just started Adderal XR (generic) a couple months ago. I’ve been lucky im finding it but my doctor (and myself) would rather be on vyvanse.
Luckily there’s a new generic for Vyvanse. Unfortunately nobody has it in stock yet and now that it exists, insurance companies don’t want to pay for brand (which is also in short supply)
Wait, what? Do I have to worry about this becoming a real issue in my country? I’m on elvanse.
Over the last couple of months 20, 30 and/or 40mg Elvanse has been out of stock in Denmark at various points. Usually returning after a week or two. Same is true for Methylphenidate in 18, 27 and/or 38mg doses.
How comparable/useful that is to you, I have no idea
Thank you so much ❤️
Unrelated to your query I encountered this site and it just might be of help to you: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/post-authorisation/availability-medicines/public-information-medicine-shortages
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Doctors in England have been told not to prescribe ADHD drugs to new patients because of a national shortage, as charities warn that the supply problems are devastating for people living with the condition.
A national patient safety alert from the Department of Health and Social Care said the shortages were down to a combination of manufacturing issues and increased global demand, and could last until the end of the year.
ADHD, which stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is described by the NHS as a condition that can make it hard to concentrate and may mean people act on impulse.
“Other ADHD products remain available but cannot meet excessive increases in demand,” the DHSC alert states.
Dr Andrew Hill, a senior visiting research fellow in the department of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool, said the problem lay in how medicines were sourced.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are aware of supply issues affecting medicines used for the management of ADHD due to increased global demand, and we have issued communications to the NHS to advise healthcare professionals on management of patients during this time.
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What’s the reason for the shortage?
You’re not allowed to make pills without permission from the people who currently make the pills, even if they’re not making enough.
