Rant incoming, clearly marked suggested solutions at the bottom under the heading. Skip to that if you don’t care/have enough meds to persevere through.

The DEA policy on stimulant medications is so dogshit that it affected the global supply of stimulant meds.

I’m not in America (thankfully) but there was months of a chain reaction where I live and people were switching to progressively higher stimulant doses, which cleaned out the supply of them by increasing demand rapidly, or they were taking double of the lower doses, which cleaned out that supply even quicker.

And what do you get when you teach ADHDers that the medicine a lot of them rely on to be functional might not be available for months on end? You get stockpiling.

I’m, uhh, not talking personally here because doing that is illegal but I’m sure people know others in their community who have ADHD who they would distribute their stockpile to in order to ensure that their lives don’t fall apart if there’s another med shortage. This even more illegal.

So the DEA, wanting to strictly control highly regulated meds, creates a situations where people are pushed onto higher doses of stimulants unnecessarily which runs the risk of causing stimulant addiction (it’s a slim chance but over a population of millions of people there’s gonna be a few one-in-a-million cases, you know?), causing people to hoard their stimulant meds (which is bad for everyone and it makes people with ADHD a target for crime), and pushes people into the black market of prescription stimulant meds, if not illicit stimulant meds, in order to manage.

DEA policy is regularly an unmitigated disaster.

I haven’t watched closely to see if things have shifted but the longer term impact of their stubbornness to adjust their policy, causing hoarding, is that like with any scarcity-hoarding feedback loop it becomes worse and worse over time.

Suggested Solutions

• If you have a prescribing doctor who is reasonable about things, talk to them about the situation of having a 30 day supply to last you ~40 days and ask if they know of any way to get around this situation because it’s impacting your life and work

• If your doctor isn’t really on the level, you can try complaining about the meds feeling like they are wearing off prematurely on days where you haven’t slept well and when you have an increased workload or increased demands on you, as if halfway through the day you hit the wall. Don’t hypothesise why this might be. You might have to keep at this as a campaign for a few appointments. If you feel as though you risk failing in your responsibilities (job, childcare, education, close relationships etc.) or it legitimately is negatively affecting these things due to this experience with the meds then voice this to your doctor.

• If you tend to work long shifts or split shifts (nurses, chefs, emergency responders etc.) then voice the above concerns even more emphatically.

• If you menstruate, you can also complain that during your period the meds feel like they do nothing and you don’t understand why.

Basically with this strategy you’re angling to get prescribed a supplemental dose of shorter-acting meds. Don’t say this out loud though, you’ll get labelled with drug-seeking behaviours.

This extra supply should help carry you through on those other 10 days where you’d otherwise be without meds.

I’d suggest taking the shorter acting ones on days off of work or where your work and personal demands are reduced so you can (hopefully) build up a small stockpile of longer acting meds over time.

This advice applies to anyone who’s struggling, either with those concerns above legitimately, with concerns about the effects of another shortage (it seems like the US has had a cyclical shortage each year that gets increasingly worse every year and this is actually where accelerationism does have an application), or when you have to deal with a shortfall where your prescriptions do not cover the amount of days until your next fill date.

Good luck and solidarity.