With pharmacies unable to fill prescriptions, many ADHD patients are turning to Craigslist to buy illicit pills online
Peruse an online marketplace like Craigslist, and you’ll find coded classified ads for “Study Help” and “Study Hall”, or calls looking for a “Study Buddy”. Despite the scholarly language, these aren’t people looking for pre-final cram session. They’re plugs for Adderall: the trade name for a combination of amphetamine salts long prescribed as a first-choice treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It’s a drug that is, of late, in perilously short supply.
The US National Institute for Mental Health estimates that ADHD affects 4.4% of adults between the ages of 18 and 44. The number of adults treated for ADHD has increased in recent decades, attributable to the wider destigmatization of diagnosing the disorder in adults as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and its knockback effects on adult mental health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that adult prescriptions for ADHD medication increased by 7.9% between 2020 and 2021, compared with a 1.4% average annual increase between 2016 and 2020. In 2021, doctors authorized in excess of 30m prescriptions for Adderall, serving nearly 4 million patients.
But over the past two years, many of patients have been unable to procure their prescription, due to manufacturing shortfalls. With the delta between demand and supply widening, some adults with diagnosed ADHD are forced to forsake CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and other drug retailers, and turn elsewhere.
It’s not meth. At all. The methyl group on the molecule makes it have massively different pharmacokinetics.
In theory, perhaps. But for anyone who’s actually taken or abused it, and especially to anyone who’s taken or abused both, they’re remarkably similar, particularly in how addictive they are.
AI profile pic detected, opinion discarded.
Then why are you still crying about it?
Absolutely not. That is complete bullshit.
Here on earth, that’s the reality of it. Welcome to the planet. Adderall is just low-grade meth.
You’re just a low-grade troll.
No, I have decades of experience with amphetamine addicts, while you’re sitting here, splitting hairs. There’s such a thing as reality, and I suggest you acquaint yourself with it.
Go trumpet fart yourself to death
Thanks for proving my point