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The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

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Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#41

Post by lupire »

opportune wrote: post #8
peyton wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the argument for OxyContin was two-fold and targeted at doctors: 1. “Pain is the fifth vital sign.” You are a Bad Doctor if you do not consider pain. 2. OxyContin is not habit-forming.

1 is a little more complicated. I believe as part of the ACA hospitals were actually evaluated on subjective pain management as reported by patients with financial implications if it seemed pain was not being managed. Also, a lot of people got started on Oxy after a surgery in which they were given it on their way out. They either started taking it and liked it, or didn’t take it and possibly had it diverted to acqua…

It's a lot easier to tell a GP you have ADHD than to get a surgery.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#42

Post by lupire »

bobro wrote: post #40
Spivak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful with this. I was “self-medicating” my ADHD with exercise for years simply thinking I just liked exercise and not ever realizing that I had worked up to 25-30 hours a week just to function. Exercise absolutely does 100% work but meds that raise your baseline so you don’t have to exercise is a much healthier relationship with it. There are a lot of habits that ADHD people fall into to “stim.” Whether or not it’…

seems really bizarre to claim taking a light form of meth several times a day is healthier than exercising.

We all breathe a light form of fire several times per minute. Putting things in spooky terms is deceptive.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#43

Post by raydiatian »

34679 wrote: post #30
raydiatian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except ADHD is not even a fictional illness because it’s not an illness at all, it’s a disorder, it’s right there in the name. To be the devils advocate, there have been plenty of researchers and psychotherapists in the recent decades lamenting ADHD as too broad a diagnosis, and it has indeed been scrutinized on multiple occasions as a convenient way to sell prescriptions. As someone diagnosed with ADHD, depression,…

A disorder is a type of illness, in the same way scotch or bourbon are types of whiskey.

Sure, but we don’t go around calling people with ADHD mentally ill, cough. The same way we don’t go around calling guns “mass drivers”, even though that’s exactly what they are.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#44

Post by buffington »

faeriechangling wrote: post #36
voidwtf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an unfortunate point of view and is damaging to those legitimately suffering with issues related to ADHD and similar diagnoses. As a child I struggled with ADHD, it’s not a state of mind. It’s not a decision. It’s a chemical imbalance that make a child’s innate lack of self control, and poor ability to self regulate something as simple as idle movements, orders of magnitude more difficult. I’m not commenting…

As time has gone on the less sympathetic I've gotten to labels like "ADHD" and the more I've thought we should just make amphetamines not require a dx, although they should probably still require a doctors supervision. The whole concept that a doctor has to say there's something wrong with you to get drugs I find to be very patronising. If somebody has trouble focusing, they can just take some drugs and fill out some…

> I'm not convinced ADHD is an illness either

Do you believe you have ADHD now?

I was fortunate to have some FMRI (I believe that's the tech) work done years ago, shortly after I was diagnosed with ADHD. The imagining made it so blatantly obvious that my brain was different than normal brains. Where a normal brain would light up like crazy for a given stimulus, mine looked like a black hole.

There are certainly bio/physical differences.

That said, I came into this comment thinking I'd take the stance of "of course it's a disease," but I think I've warmed up somewhat to what I think is your argument: lets stop with the labels.

What holds me back from getting on board is that it's not like a headache. I can't just be like "oh, I'm feeling scattered" and take a pill when I need to. That "I'm feeling scattered" is 100% of the time.

So I'm still in the "it's for sure a disease" camp. But I really don't care all that much in the end - I just want to make sure people stop hogging what allows me to even have a job and family.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#45

Post by autoexec »

lupire wrote: post #41
opportune wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 is a little more complicated. I believe as part of the ACA hospitals were actually evaluated on subjective pain management as reported by patients with financial implications if it seemed pain was not being managed. Also, a lot of people got started on Oxy after a surgery in which they were given it on their way out. They either started taking it and liked it, or didn’t take it and possibly had it diverted to acqua…

It's a lot easier to tell a GP you have ADHD than to get a surgery.

Not if you actually need a surgery. If you need a surgery you can generally get one pretty quickly and with little complication. Getting a prescription for Adderall from a responsible doctor when you actually need it can take months and multiple visits to a psychiatrist.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#46

Post by autoexec »

Spivak wrote: post #20
xivusr wrote: post #12

I've found exercise (minimum of 5 hrs a week) to work better than any substance for curing depression, anxiety, and concentration. Individual results may vary.

Careful with this. I was “self-medicating” my ADHD with exercise for years simply thinking I just liked exercise and not ever realizing that I had worked up to 25-30 hours a week just to function. Exercise absolutely does 100% work but meds that raise your baseline so you don’t have to exercise is a much healthier relationship with it. There are a lot of habits that ADHD people fall into to “stim.” Whether or not it’…

> Exercise absolutely does 100% work

Exercise works for you, but we should be careful about overbroad generalizations. Exercise is a pretty good thing for just about everyone with lots of benefits, and it likely can help many with ADHD, but it's never going to be enough for some people. I doubt there's anything that will 100% work for everyone. Even stimulants can't help everyone with ADHD, and for those who do benefit from medication some medications will work better than others.

Ultimately it's a lifelong process to figure out what helps with symptoms, what makes them worse, and what doesn't do much if anything at all. It's probably worth giving exercise shot for people who aren't already active enough, but don't expect miracles.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#48

Post by autoexec »

34679 wrote: post #17
voidwtf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an unfortunate point of view and is damaging to those legitimately suffering with issues related to ADHD and similar diagnoses. As a child I struggled with ADHD, it’s not a state of mind. It’s not a decision. It’s a chemical imbalance that make a child’s innate lack of self control, and poor ability to self regulate something as simple as idle movements, orders of magnitude more difficult. I’m not commenting…

> I’m not commenting on over/under diagnosing of ADHD, I’m commenting on a condition that some individuals legitimately deal with. Some find themselves unable to focus on tasks, or get labeled the weird kid in their peer group because of behaviors they don’t even realize they’re doing. I'm of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with that. I lean more towards the acceptance side of things. Humans are diverse in man…

> I don't believe we should be attempting to stifle that with drugs.

Even if society placed zero demands on me whatsoever and I never had to worry about being anywhere at a specific date/time, or never had to sit still for any length of time if I didn't feel like it, I still wouldn't be happy suffering from ADHD.

ADHD is not some perfectly normal but uncommon personality quirk that our narrow minded society has cruelly chosen to punish, it's a neurodevelopmental disorder impacting executive function making it difficult for people to accomplish the things they want to even entirely on their own terms.

Some people can find coping strategies that let them get by with only minor difficulty, but for others there is no amount of skill development or accommodation that is going to make up for their malfunctioning brains.

Medication isn't for everyone. It's not effective for everyone, and isn't necessary for everyone, but it'd be wrong to think that without the expectations imposed on us by society medication would never be necessary or that ADHD isn't really a problem because it's just a different way of doing things or looking at the world. It's mental illness, and one way or another symptoms will typically need to be treated or it will cause the mentally ill person needless suffering.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#49

Post by gregoryl »

rtev wrote: post #47

While this is too bad, maybe it will push people toward effective alternatives. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors help me more than ADHD stimulants ever did, and they aren’t known to be neurotoxic like Adderall.

Maoi have serious side effects, dangerous interactions with other drugs (and food!) and have withdrawal effects. These do not combine well with ADHD symptoms, and are not a first line treatment for a good reason.

Re: The FDA has officially declared a shortage of Adderall

#50

Post by autoexec »

buffington wrote: post #44
faeriechangling wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As time has gone on the less sympathetic I've gotten to labels like "ADHD" and the more I've thought we should just make amphetamines not require a dx, although they should probably still require a doctors supervision. The whole concept that a doctor has to say there's something wrong with you to get drugs I find to be very patronising. If somebody has trouble focusing, they can just take some drugs and fill out some…

> I'm not convinced ADHD is an illness either Do you believe you have ADHD now? I was fortunate to have some FMRI (I believe that's the tech) work done years ago, shortly after I was diagnosed with ADHD. The imagining made it so blatantly obvious that my brain was different than normal brains. Where a normal brain would light up like crazy for a given stimulus, mine looked like a black hole. There are certainly bio/p…

> Where a normal brain would light up like crazy for a given stimulus, mine looked like a black hole. There are certainly bio/physical differences.

I'd be careful about this. I've never seen anything to suggest that we could screen every child with FMRI scans to catch blatantly obvious indicators of ADHD or use scans as a definitive test for who should get medications. I honestly wish it really worked that way because it'd end all the hand-wringing about overprescribed medications and prevent a lot of kids from struggling unnecessarily, but unless something's changed pretty recently there's no one test that can identify someone as having ADHD.

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