The Great Adderall Shortage of 2022
Photo by Tanya J. Peterson
Imagine this: It’s Monday morning. You crawl out of bed and yawn through a cup of coffee. Speaking of a stimulant, it's time to take yours! You dig into your Adderall bottle, a common mediation used to treat ADHD, and notice that you only have one pill left and no refills (it’s a persnickety controlled substance that your psychiatrist refuses to give refills for). You dial their office number and get in touch with front desk Sandy, who thinks ADHD and ADD were made up by the millennials. She says that she will call it in later (she never feels the same sense of urgency as you). When you finally get a text confirming that Sandy sent it to the pharmacy, it’s busy with the afterschool and work hustle, so you have to wait in line. Eventually, it is your turn, and you give the pharmacy tech your full name and date of birth. They type a few words, make a face, and proceed to tell you that they don’t have any Adderall right now. There's a “problem with the distributor” and you can call around and see if anyone else has it, but “it's doubtful.”
After getting home and doing some research, it turns out this is an actual problem. The first month of 2022 has brought unexpected challenges to people across the country who regularly take prescription Adderall. This is a rippling effect due to a change in Medicaid coverage. They would no longer cover the generic brand of Adderall that many people were taking; people had to switch to taking the name brand.
Dr. Emily Rademacher, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Bellin Psychiatric Center in Green Bay explains that “The reason for the change, apparently, was because the manufacturer of brand name Adderall was offering a rebate that would actually, after the rebate, make the brand name cheaper than the generic for the state. The state knew, obviously, about these changes coming. The pharmacy association knew about the changes coming. Nobody remembered to tell the wholesalers that this change was coming.”
However, these are temporary shortages.
According to the Medicaid division of the Department of Health and Safety, “State Medicaid programs may secure additional rebates from drug manufacturers by establishing preferred drug lists…Through its preferred drug list, [the state] was able to secure additional rebates that lowered the cost of brand name Adderall to be less than that of the generic alternative. In circumstances like these, the Medicaid program requires its members to use the brand name drug instead of the generic. Notably, in January, the Department of Health Services (DHS) was made aware that major pharmaceutical wholesalers did not have sufficient supplies of the brand name drug Adderall to meet demand…Beginning on February 1, DHS will revert back to the previous policy as the major wholesalers confirm that they will have adequate supplies of the brand name Adderall.”
For someone who relies on Adderall to treat ADHD, the question then becomes: how do you pass the time until February 1st? When manufacturers will finally catch up with demand. You walk in an impulsive fog. You say the first thing that you think to anyone who will listen. You cannot comprehend any of your readings. You can’t remember where you last placed your car keys. The time-blindness is the worst part. Today, you lay in bed for hours, hyper-fixating on Catherine the Great (the longest-ruling female leader of Russia). You lose hours of time, not moving or eating or using the bathroom. It isn’t until someone yells down the hall that you realize that it is now dark outside, and you are starving. You count the days until February 1st.
