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Comment by thebigspacefuck | Hacker News Reader

Is your vyvanse like $300 a month? I was taking it and it helped with a lot of things but I stopped because it was so expensive. Therapy was expensive too

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I live in Brazil, therapy and meds here are pretty expensive. I usually spend a whole Brazilian minimum wage (roughly aroung us$200 - us$300) on therapy and Vyvanse per month. Wage gap here is pretty big so as I work in the marketing/tech industry I can afford to do so as dealing with my ADHD is my priority now. I receive around 7x our country's minimum wage per month as a parameter.

I am on Vyvanse and Adderall XR. Vyvanse has a much cleaner feeling to me and it is easier for me to skip a day (if I want to, like staying home and playing with kids) where as with the Adderall I cannot skip a day without harsh side effects.

Edit: and I forgot to mention, my insurance covers it, thankfully but they wouldn't cover something like Mydayis

There's no generic alternative for Vyvanse, so w/o insurance it's going to be costly.

I have ADHD. I've tried both Adderall and Vyvanse, and IMO Vyvanse is the much cleaner feeling drug. Kinda glad the price point kept me out of it because it compelled me to find strategies that dont involve meds.

Vyvanse is an abuse resistant form of dextroamphetamine basically. Generic dextroamphetamine is an alternative if it's legal in your country. Adderall is a combination of dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine.

Wellbutrin can help too.

I think a lot of vendors carry generic Desoxyn at very affordable prices.

It's not the same substance.

Desoxyn is pharmaceutical methamphetamine.

Vyvanse is lisdexamphetamine, a slow release version of dexamphetamine.

Don't be mislead by the name, they're quite different. And methamphetamine is very rarely prescribed, only when everything else fails. While Vyvanse is usually first line treatment.

I did not mean to suggest that they were the same substance. Reviews by people with ADHD people who have tried many meds paint a rosy picture of this particular medication. The order in which doctors prescribe things seems mostly unrelated to which things are best for patients.

So I've heard, but I've also heard psychiatrists being very cautious in prescribing Desoxyn. AFAIR Slate Star Codex linked many times in this thread is one of them. And I'm not even sure you can get it prescribed outside of the US.

Methamphetamine seems to be very effective with fewer side effects, but there's a lot of stigma and legal issues with it being one of the most controlled substances. So even if cheap it's not going to be easy or convenient to get it prescribed.

Actually, for me Vyvanse wasn't even in the first three medications suggested to me to try first.

Depends, here in the UK it is, while for example Adderall is very expensive as it needs to be imported from the US.

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