Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

There's other ways to realign incentives. A buy back program would do a lot honestly to restrict the supply. A lot of people who got them for legit purposes would still end up with a ton leftover when they would get their next prescription. If they were able to get more money returning them to the pharmacy or counting them towards their next prescription than selling them to other students, that's what they would do.

View on HN

If we're still talking about ADHD medications then... I have no idea where you're coming from. ADHD medications are very tightly controlled - if you accidentally double dose a few times and need an early fill you're going to get grilled (or even denied) by the pharmacist. There is a small margin for error but for the most part people using ADHD medications get precisely what they need to get to the next drug refill and not a pill more.

> if you accidentally double dose a few times and need an early fill you're going to get grilled (or even denied) by the pharmacist

That's not a thing. Nobody is getting grilled coming in early for their stimulant medications. They just say "come back in a couple days" and "have a nice day." I've filled multiple stimulant meds in a period of 2 weeks from the same doc and same pharmacist. Neither care (I dumped out a drug that had side effects so I needed something else).

If people double up, after they run out they just don't have pills for a few days until they get another fill.

That's honestly pretty much what I said: if you run out and need to refill early it's a struggle. A lot of ADHD medications come with strong withdrawl symptoms so "don't have pills for a few days" for me will mean... day 1: sleep for like twenty hours straight and miss work, day 2: have massive headaches all day and miss work, day 3+: maybe be able to attend work? Certainly struggle to actually perform my job duties.

So running out of meds is something that's highly disruptive to my life and I'll always try and minimize gaps if they do occur.

>That's honestly pretty much what I said

You said " Nobody is getting grilled coming in early for their stimulant medications" ?

Okay then.

I am prescribed to take one pill each day. I prefer to keep this up on the weekends because I like being able to function even when I'm not being paid to. I can only fill a prescription once a month. The pill bottles have 28 pills in them.

What possibly would be left over?

Most people I knew who were on them weren't taking the dosage they were being prescribed. The side effects were too much taking it daily, so they would just use it if they were spending a lot of time in the library that day, and would end the month with half the bottle still by the time they reupped. Just because you have ADHD and benefit sometimes from these meds doesn't mean you feel great being on them 100% of the time nor need to be taking them if you are not doing anything mentally demanding that day. It's basically meth lite, after all.

My experience is that I feel significantly better when I am on my meds and am able to function consistently. I envy people who function well enough off their meds that they can be choosy about when they take them. I have no experience with meth but my understanding is that it is only superficially similar to meth.

Where would leftovers come from?

Most ADD individuals skip doses periodically. Sometimes because they forget (we're treating an illness that causes you to get distracted, remember), or they slept in on the weekend and don't want to mess up their sleep schedule, or they simply don't have anything they really need to be able to pay attention to that day, or maybe they don't need their second dose in the day that particular day.

Unlike, say, antidepressants, there's no real backswing on off days: you just revert to your pre-medication attention levels which, especially in the case of people who got diagnosed later than usual, they have coping mechanisms for.

This results in the average ADD-medicated patient having a couple pills leftover each month.

do you understand how often there are issues filling one's adhd prescription on time even before the shortage? Almost every month the pharmacy is out of stock for a couple days. Very few people sell their couple of extra pills, they are saved for the inevitable delays in filling scripts.

And honestly? Why is this even being discussed, as if college kids getting adderall to study for math tests is some societal scourge ruining lives or something? Who gives a shit and why is it an issue that justifies making life difficult for people who are prescribed it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com