Because of the Adderall shortage, I had to call over 40 pharmacies to try and get my prescription filled — and I still didn’t find it in stock anywhere

Getty Images This year, Adderall shortages have been making it difficult for people to get prescriptions filled. I called over 40 pharmacies this month trying to find it, which was incredibly exhausting.   I still ended up going a few days without it and paying more than I usually do for my prescription.

One great thing about social media is that, in many instances and with a discerning eye, it allows you to cross-check official statements when they conflict with anecdotal sources. If you were only to visit the website of the Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, you would think the Adderall shortages were no longer an issue. After all, the FDA’s page for the medication states that the shortages ended in May 2022 and August 2022, respectively.

If that’s true, however, why are so many of us still having such a hard time obtaining these meds? Take a look on Twitter or even Google Trends, and it quickly becomes clear that many of us who take Adderall are still having trouble getting our prescriptions filled; in fact, anecdotal evidence from patients and even doctors seems to suggest the shortage is actually getting worse. For me, the lead-up to refilling my prescription has become an anxiety-filled process I dread every month. This month, I called more than 40 pharmacies and still didn’t have an answer — or my prescriptionIn the early months of the pandemic, I left my home in Brooklyn once a month for uncharacteristically quick, near-deserted train rides to my doctor’s Columbus Circle office in Manhattan.

We’d have our in-person check-in, determine whether my med routine was copacetic as-is or if any changes were in order, and then he’d send my prescription to the friendly and reliable pharmacy downtown that I’d patronized for years. In spring 2022, however, that last step in the process became tumultuous. “We have your other meds,” my pharmacist said over the phone.

“But we’re completely out of the Adderall. “I’d encountered brief delays before, so at first I wasn’t all that nervous. Plus, I often took slightly lower doses on the weekends, so I had a few spares to tide me over as needed.

“Do you know when I’ll be able to pick it up?” I asked. “Honestly, everyone is having trouble getting it. We might get restocked on Monday, but we don’t know for sure.

I’m really sorry. Just call back Tuesday,” the pharmacist said. On Tuesday, I stopped by the pharmacy after work; they had not been restocked.

At the pharmacist’s recommendation, I darted across the street to a Rite Aid to see if my prescription could be sent there. The pharmacist there informed me that, despite being early in the month, they had already hit their maximum for filling Adderall prescriptions. She recommended that I call independent, local pharmacies, so I did.

Then, the true runaround began. Employees at smaller pharmacies told me to call the larger drugstores, while pharmacists at big chains advised me to call the smaller ones. Over the next two days, I called over 40 pharmacies — recommendations from my doctor, my friends, Yelp, Google.

The sentiment they all shared: Not only did they not have Adderall in stock, but they had no idea when they would have it again. But why is this happening? It’s hard to tell. As Insider previously reported, the Israeli multinational company Teva Pharmaceuticals, which is the largest supplier of Adderall in the US, told Bloomberg in August that it attributes the shortage to an increase in ADHD diagnoses from telehealth companies during the pandemic.

In October, several additional companies said they are having difficulty supplying Adderall and its generics, as originally reported by Fierce Pharma, a trade publication that covers the pharmaceutical industry, though many did not provide a reason. Most also did not offer a timeline for a resolution to the matter. The federal government, meanwhile, has direct involvement in regulating the production of Adderall and its generics.

Dealing with Adderall withdrawal can make everything more difficult — including tracking down a prescriptionThe symptoms of Adderall withdrawal include “agitation, generalized slowing of mental and physical activity, increased appetite,” and “unusual tiredness or weakness,” according to the Mayo Clinic. The clinic also notes that some people may experience serious effects on their sleep: bad dreams, sleeping too much or too little, or even an inability to sleep at all. In my case, symptoms included feeling exhausted yet being unable to sleep, being irritable, and — no surprise here — having difficulty concentrating.

I’m not alone in this. On top of the many, many tweets about the shortages that have come across my timeline, Google Trends shows a clear spike in search interest for the phrase “adderall withdrawal,” while searches for “adderall withdrawal” in August through October were 23% higher by average monthly volume than in May through July, according to SEMRush. However, the fact that I’m not alone in this doesn’t make it all that much easier to bear.

This is also not the only time this has happened to me. In the past year, there were multiple months where getting my prescription filled was nearly impossible. Each time, I found myself snapping at my partner, feeling too tired to play with my cats, and losing interest in my hobbies.

I had to call more pharmacies and find more workarounds through my doctor. Each time, my outlook on the future waned, despite the fact that I’ve found a treatment that works. Or, perhaps, because of it — when you know there’s something that can help, but you can’t access it, it’s almost worse than not having knowledge of its existence at all.

Sure, it would be naive — if not flat-out ignorant — to deny that some people, including children and teenagers, take Adderall recreationally. But there are also literally millions of people, most of whom are adults, whose doctors have evaluated their symptoms and concluded that Adderall is an appropriate treatment. Like so many other people, I spent years working with my healthcare providers to research, discuss, and do trial-and-error runs of psychiatric and therapeutic treatments in an effort to address the imbalances that have plagued my brain since early childhood.

 Over the years, I’ve found a regimen and routine that works for me — and, with it, a sense of predictable stability I never knew I could achieve. Now, the very treatments that helped me so much are a major source of chaos and disorder, one that is as unavoidable and intrusive as it is infuriating. If I wasn’t so tired right now, I might laugh at the irony.

The good news: While writing this, I was finally able to fill my prescription at a new pharmacy. The bad news: It cost around three times more than usual, and, at the time of filing my piece, I am still waiting to find out why, which has added yet another exhausting level to a growing heap of uncertainty. Read the original article on Insider.